Mine is the Goot 240V 70W 240V Soldering Iron. What’s yours?
Cheers,
Marcus
My favourite cheap iron at the moment is the Jaycar TS1390, but mine developed an occasional overheat fault, so I opened it up, resoldered the connectors, and added a bright red LED and dropping resistor in parallel with the heater element.
This lets me see when it is heating, what duty cycle it is using for heating, and if it has stuck on heating. It hasn’t overheated since though, so I think it was a soldering problem.
It also has an energy saving feature, not documented, which reduces the set temperature to 200°C after a while. Unfortunately the time interval is not configurable, so one has to keep watch and hit the up or down button to bring it back to your set point.
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Back in the days of the first Ninja Blocks where I soldered up hundreds of sensors…I quite liked this little guy:
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Gotta be the Hakko fx-888D, got it after a recommendation from the EEVBlog and it’s a great starter iron for beginners! Definitely worth every dollar.
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Yep, same. I need to get a smaller tip for it though. The one it came with is a bit fat for the little circuits.
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Fortunately the tips are very generic, unlike some other irons. Cough JBC Cough.
Yeah got a hakko two weeks ago been in soldering heaven feel like a worker at Foxcon which is actually not heaven. Oh well back to building I go.
I’m with sunnypack. Love this little beauty 
HI…
I have a work station I got from ebay for about $100.00. Works great
Solder station is to the right.
The 2 machine are a 3d Printer and a PCB drill mill, all the blue parts I printed on my other 3d printer.
Auzze
Has anyone else tried the Thermaltronics TMT-900S or similar? I inherited one from a mate and it’s basically the only iron I’ve ever used. You can’t adjust the temperature because it uses something called Curie Heat Technology to automatically determine how much heat to provide. Basically turn it on and go. I’m interested to know what other people think because I don’t have anything else to judge it by. The thing is ready to use about 10 seconds after power on and you can hot swap the tips in seconds.
Absolutely. 888 for the win. Mektronics have a good range of tips as well.
This is my current ‘workhorse’ soldering iron. Doesn’t take long to heat up and tends to stay relatively clean (although I’ve also started using a ‘brass sponge’ as well as a damp sponge so that seems to make the difference).
The only thing that worries me with this soldering station is that I haven’t been able to source any spare tips for it.
Also got my 888 from Mektronics. Loved every minute with it.
Hakko 936 here. A fair bit older but still perfectly functional. Can do ridiculously fine pitch smd stuff with it, and still have plenty of grunt for the larger projects.
Does anyone know of Hakko irons in walk-in retail in Sydney? I’m visiting.
I’m partial to the Goot Station. Have been using it daily for 3 years now. With proper care I haven’t needed to replace a tip yet.
Hakko’s are great, just be sure to get a genuine one.
My personal favourite is the Weller WD2000M, which has a small “pencil” iron & separate tweezers. These are perfect for fine or SMD work, but the pencil is still capable of 40W when you need it. They heat up in seconds and turn off when placed back in the stand. They’re no longer made, but there is a similar model available.
In any case they will set you back around $1500 - you didn’t specifically say it had to be cheap