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Everyone knows that at some stage you need to blame your tools (after the other excuses have run out), and like most things you can pay a little money or a lot, and sometimes there is little difference in the result … or so it would seem.
The purpose of this article is not to separate you from your hard-earned cash, but to share a few tricks and provide some information to make an informed choice when buying equipment.
Everyone knows that the best soldering iron is some large lump of material that you throw into the fire until it is red hot and then apply to the job and hope that some of the exploding material fuses the bits together.
That might work for joining two bits of metal together but it is not going to work for electronics.
Soldering electronics is not only mechanical bonding, but also making an electrically conductive joint. The solder used has a particular temperature range and too hot will ‘cook’ the joint and make it porous, while too cold means it sticks to one or other part but doesn’t bond.