I finally have enough soldering to do to justify my first soldering iron purchase. The Hakko FX-888D seems (relatively) high end, but very popular? This is the best deal I could find. It comes with a brass sponge and some nice flush cutters, so if I add a roll of solder (lead free, rosin core, 0.8 mm) I’ll be in business?
Can anyone with more experience please confirm I’m on the right track, or suggest a superior alternative?
While the Hakko’s have lots of fans I have never found them to be very reliable. To be honest though we’ve used them quite a bit at VHS and they have seen a lot of abuse. I’ve had a Weller station for about 8 years. It’s been great. I bought it at RP Electronics I think when it was on sale.
http://www.weller-toolsus.com/weller-wes51-station-50-60w-120v-wes51.html
We also have Weller stations at the space and several of them are pretty old but still going strong.
I should add you can also pick up some pretty good soldering stations at Lee’s Electronics for about half the price of a brand name one. They are mostly hakko and weller clones. Check out our stations at the space. A bunch of them are clones.
We have a few of these which are hakko clones. SOLDERING STATION 936A ANALOG CONTROL
Thanks for these recommendations!
Yes, please let me know what you think of it.
Despite not having the need to purchase another soldering iron (I have a Weller clone), I’ve been really tempted to get a TS100 for a long time now.
Fun resources:
TS100 review:
Alternative firmware:
Alternative firmware written in Rust
Hack to make it accept higher quality expensive tips:
If I didn’t have a station already I would totally buy this.
Soldering Iron Reviews:
https://www.eeweb.com/profile/max-maxfield/articles/the-best-deal-on-soldering-irons
I use my old reliable Weller WES51, it has temperature control.
Which tip would you recommend for a through-hole project, such as this?
The TS100 comes bundled with one of a variety of tips: B2, BC2, C1, C4, D24, I, ILS, K, KU,
I’m not sure as I don’t know what those tips translate to on a Weller. I guess a B2 maybe? I pretty much just use a standard conical iron tip that isn’t superfine. I don’t like superfine tips for through-hole as I find they take longer to heat up the joint and also to melt solder. Just going to ping @ryanmaclean as he also makes keyboards and might have some recommendations. @nottheoilrig have you tried any of our irons? Pretty much all the tips are standard cone tips and they work well for most through-hole. Feel free to use our stuff.
Here’s a pic of my current weller tip. It’s a little fine but not bad. I used it to fix a tablet recently that had a mix of through-hole and surface mount connections. I would go thicker than this for straight up through hole soldering.
But seriously I would probably buy a hakko or weller clone with good performance before buying the TS100.
Thanks everyone for your advice! I just completed my first project:
The diodes, etc. came preassembled, I only had to solder on the switches. The pins were widely spaced and forgiving. Some of my joints appear cold, but still work. I slowly got the hang of it.
I settled on this TS100 off of Amazon because it was small and novel. It worked well, although I lack anything to compare it to.
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