How know if solder iron has good quality tip?

Dick Cappels said:

About 50 years ago, driving with the Ungar representative to or from the WESCON exhibit in San Francisco. He told me that tips wear out quickly if they are cleaned too often. Since then, I keep my tips tinned I rarely rub them to anything to clean off the dross. I also have a triac dimmer circuit so I can have the iron idle at a lower temperature. The lower idle temperature ican be lower by using a soldering tip with a heat reservoirs.
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50 years ago it might have been 'reasonable' advice - but now simply ensure you use iron plated tips, just clean with a damp sponge, and set your temperature controlled soldering iron to a sensible temperature - although the iron temperature doesn't really matter much, as it's controlled anyway.

'Back in the day' with plain copper tips, and non-temperature controlled soldering irons, in a working environment you'd get through multiple tips per year, and had to continually file the tip to make it last that long. A common modification was to add a microswitch and half wave rectifier to the soldering iron stand, so when the iron was in it's stand the rectifier was in-circuit (reducing it's power), and was shorted out by the switch when you picked the iron up.

As a long term Antex soldering iron user, bit's last for decades - and it's rare to ever have to replace one.

Believe it or not 50 years ago plated tips were used, alongside bare copper tips. The discussion was with respect to operators who spent their whole day soldering parts into PC boards. A lot of companies didn't have wave solder then and building in-house seemed to make economic sense.

Here is a write-up that you may find helpful: https://www.conro.com/tips-to-choose-the-right-soldering-tip/

Dick Cappels said:

Believe it or not 50 years ago plated tips were used, alongside bare copper tips. The discussion was with respect to operators who spent their whole day soldering parts into PC boards. A lot of companies didn't have wave solder then and building in-house seemed to make economic sense.

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They were still fairly uncommon 50 years ago, and as for wave flow machines they don't work unless you have PCB's , and 50 years ago PCB's weren't anywhere near as common as today.

Imagine trying to wave solder a hand wired metal chassis and tag strip (or even no tag strip) valve TV

Louis A said:

For a soldering gun, the tip must be made of high-quality pure tin.

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I have no idea where you got that (and the rest of the info) from, but is is total nonsense...

Tin melts at ~232'C

Soldering irons typically run somewhere in the 300 - 400'C range.

My iron-plated Antex bits last years at typically 350'C.

(Bits need tinning; they are not made of Tin).

rjenkinsgb said:

I have no idea where you got that (and the rest of the info) from, but is is total nonsense...

Tin melts at ~232'C

Soldering irons typically run somewhere in the 300 - 400'C range.

My iron-plated Antex bits last years at typically 350'C.

(Bits need tinning; they are not made of Tin).

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Sorry RJ, but you have just been replying to a a spammer (Now deleted).

JimB

Nigel Goodwin said:

They were still fairly uncommon 50 years ago, and as for wave flow machines they don't work unless you have PCB's , and 50 years ago PCB's weren't anywhere near as common as today.

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Small nit-pick. Nearly everything my employer (and every one after that) made starting in the early 1970's was made was on a PCB (RTL logic was a still a big thing then!). Only some specialized harness were not on PCBs but were wire. By about 1960 most consumer electronics moved to PCBs and mostly solid state. The first transistor radios I repaired sometime after 1955 were on printed circuit boards.

By 1965 or so I had salvaged many parts from discarded TV receivers made in the 1950's, all of which were made with solder lugs and point-to-point wiring. There few if any semiconductor so the harvest was not particularly good.

Dick Cappels said:

Small nit-pick. Nearly everything my employer (and every one after that) made starting in the early 1970's was made was on a PCB (RTL logic was a still a big thing then!). Only some specialized harness were not on PCBs but were wire. By about 1960 most consumer electronics moved to PCBs and mostly solid state. The first transistor radios I repaired sometime after 1955 were on printed circuit boards.

By 1965 or so I had salvaged many parts from discarded TV receivers made in the 1950's, all of which were made with solder lugs and point-to-point wiring. There few if any semiconductor so the harvest was not particularly good.

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Well you've replied to an old post that was moved up by a spammer (now deleted), but in the 60's and early 70's hard wiring, tag strips etc. were still pretty common.

Not a very helpful date "sometime after 1955" - as that is when transistors were invented

But again, early transistor radios didn't use PCB's either - although they certainly began doing so earlier than valve radios did.

Considering how slow the USA were to adopt transistors (still making valve TV's long after most other countries had moved to transistors), I see no reason to imagine they moved to PCB's very quickly either?.