If you want to get into soldering, do yourself a favor and invest in a good station, iron, and tips. If you want to de-solder, good quality soldering wick is also really important (I use chemtronics).
I was lucky enough to snag an old Metcal from work for free, and it's fantastic. The way they work is really cool too: it sends a high power RF signal (i.e. AC voltage) to the coil in the tip. Because of the skin effect and curie point, it will heat up until the point where the coil loses it's magnetism, resulting in a self-regulating tip temperature that doesn't need a thermo couple! [1] It responds very quickly to thermal loads, too. It's an expensive system to be sure, but totally worth it especially if you can find it used. They're also great about support even for older units, and you can get the entire schematics online if you need to make any repairs.
You can spend a lot of money on a good iron, but you probably don’t need to. The pinecil is shockingly good for the price. And I mean that it is competitive with a nice Hakko at literally $800 less. It’s not perfect for all situations, but if you’re doing anything short of soldering all day everyday, spend $40 and get a Pinecil off Amazon. Learn how it works, and get an appropriate stand for it.
I agree that nobody needs a multi-hundred or thousand dollar iron just to learn on, but I think your rec of the pinecil for beginners is a bit flawed.
To start with, the fact that the manufacturer includes the instruction set and address space size before the heat-up time makes me pretty skeptical. I get that its hackable, and that's cool and all, but as with all "smart things", I care about the "thing" part way more than the "smart" part. I can implement a PID controller in about 20 minutes (maybe an hour if I need to bit bang the pwm output) on any number of microcontrollers; that's the easy part.
Also, the USB-C power supply is going to be nothing but a headache. I already have drawers and drawers of usb cables that can't handle the current I want to use, now I need to keep careful track of my soldering cable, which only performs at 60W over USB (and at best 90W using a barrel jack supply)? And the iron doesn't even come with a power supply, so you have to go source that too. It may be $40 for the iron, but then its another $10-40 for the power supply, plus (as you say) an appropriate stand, brass sponge, etc, etc. Suddenly, the dedicated station like the (very affordable Hakko FX888D-23BY) starts to look pretty good.
The pinecil seems like a good thing to keep in your crash bag, but it feels a bit like refusing to buy a power drill because your swiss army knife has a screw driver.
I don't care at all about the hackability of the pinecil but I think it's excellent. I have a Hakko FX880 and a "T12 clone" and I have not used them in years now because the pinecil is just as good for anything I do and it's so much more convenient to unplug my laptop and plug in the pinecil when I need to solder for an hour. Plus the tips are good and cheap.
I've not had any trouble using a random usb-c cable or laptop usb-c charger. But I recommend the pinecil silicone cable for $4 that won't get burnt.
I never bought the Pinecil because I already had its predecessor the TS100 which uses the same tips and it does its job perfectly. It lacks USB-C though.
If you buy direct from Pine64, you can get a stand for an extra two bucks. A brass sponge is what, another two dollars? And many hackers likely already have a GaN charger or Apple charger.
Great, perfect for the would-be hacker who bought an arduino and some random breakout board! All that stands between you and a dodgy temperature sensor is a [checks notes] spare laptop power supply! Who doesn't have one of those just laying around prior to embarking on a career of hardware hacking?
My criticism is that, as a first soldering iron, you shouldn't have to have a bunch of background knowledge just to know what parts are missing. They should at least sell a kit with all that stuff.
> My criticism is that, as a first soldering iron, you shouldn't have to have a bunch of background knowledge just to know what parts are missing. They should at least sell a kit with all that stuff.
I guess that's fair for someone who is completely new to the world of electronics such as teenagers or older people who just never really did a lot of tech stuff.
But for many tech-y people without a soldering iron the Pinecil is fine; I don't currently own a soldering iron and I've never really been into electronics, but the Pinecil would be brilliant for me because 1) I know about tech-y stuff in general, and 2) I do know the basics of electronics and how to solder. I think this probably applies to most of the sad losers on HN who don't own a soldering iron.
In general Pine64 is explicitly aimed at hobbyists and people who "know what they're doing" rather than the mass market.
You need some way to power the stuff you're going to build, so why not just get a multi-output charger that can run the Pinecil and also power your project and charge your phone?
Now that USB-PD triggers, and ESP32 Arduinos with USB-C exist, I think it makes a lot of sense just to use them for almost everything.
It’s the shipping. Amazon is subsidizing the shipping in the price. There’s an advantage there that you can get it in a couple of days instead of weeks.
I don't think this is a good idea at all. This is like saying you should buy lifting shoes, a belt, a pair of gloves and bands before you go to the gym for the first time. Literally any setup that does the job is fine when you're just getting into it — you don't know what you don't know and having a cheap entry point is a good way to figure out if you like it at all, what kind of a workflow works for you, etc.
Absolutely. I can personally attest to the fact that $5 soldering iron is good enough for most common (non-smd) jobs. I've seen people do smd soldering with a big chisel tip, even a soldering gun, but it takes training. But I get OP's point. It's extremely frustrating if not impossible to do the job if the iron is super bad, if the flux or soldrr is bad etc.
For a beginner, a soldering station or a high-tech iron is absolutely not necessary. You just need a non-garbage iron, some decent quality lead-rosin solder and a decent amount of flux (cheap rosin would do). Nevertheless, having high-end tools will make things much, much easier and simpler. But at the same time, I believe you'll get a great training if you learn things the hard way.
Back in the day, one of my friends built a Spectrum-compatible computer from parts, using a piece of laminate board without foil, some thin wires, and a 60W soldering iron, in a college dorm room.
The fact that it can be done does not make it particularly convenient or easy, especially for a novice (my friend was pretty experienced with electronic assembly by then).
This blows everything sold at Microcenter or at this price point out of the water - ~$100 is a pretty cheap entrypoint compared to the FX888 that has been touted for decades.
Using a cheap soldering iron is not even remotely as dramatic as you make it out to be though? If you're working with expensive parts, sure you want your equipment to match, but a beginner won't be doing that. A beginner will have a 555, a few resistors and two airwires and honestly you could solder that with practically anything.
I think there are some people in this thread which started soldering before soldering irons with temperature control were the norm. It makes a huge difference indeed, but now practically all have it and they are cheap.
And since I didn't see it mentioned I recommend starting with leaded solder (and good ventilation always).
> Literally any setup that does the job is fine when you're just getting into it — you don't know what you don't know and having a cheap entry point is a good way to figure out if you like it at all, what kind of a workflow works for you, etc.
Lifting isn't a good analogy. Learning guitar is a better analogy.
Sure, you can learn on a $100 guitar, but it's gonna suck. And, it's going to impair learning to play guitar. The action is going to be high and stiff. The frets are liklely to be finished badly and the fret ends are going to be sharp. The pickups are going to be crappy. The finish is going to either be thick or non-existent. The tuners will probably not hold tune through a single song. Strings will buzz because alignment is off.
A $500 guitar, however, likely won't have any of those issues. The action will be lower. The frets will be finished properly and the fret ends will be filed off. The tuners will hold tune for weeks--your strings stretching will be your only tuning issue.
The difference between a $100 and a $500 guitar is like night and day. The guitar becomes enjoyable rather than something to be worked around.
Is this based on experience? I've taught soldering to a number of people, and a certain level of equipment really makes it go better. Especially with lead free solder. The basic setup is not exorbitant.
Well, if you get something cheaper and of less quality, there's a higher chance that if you mess up, as a newbie, it'll be harder to figure out what the problem is.
It could be just faulty, or it could be a mistake on your end.
Edit: Reading the other comments, it seems I'm mistaken about this.
The new generation of cheap Chinese soldering stations are remarkably good. They're fully compatible with Hakko T12 or JBC T245 irons and tips, so you can use a genuine tip with pretty much identical performance at a fraction of the cost.
The Miniware-style portable irons aren't quite as good, but they're incredibly convenient because they'll run from a USB-PD power bank or a surplus laptop PSU. A portable kit that fits in a laptop bag and costs under $100 isn't dramatically worse than a high-end soldering station for most applications.
For SMD work, the most important tools that you haven't mentioned are alcohol swabs and flux. When you're dealing with tiny pads and fine pitches, there's very little margin for poor wetting - you need scrupulously clean and generously fluxed surfaces to get a reliable fillet.
There are also a variety of inexpensive temperature-controlled hotplates available from AliExpress, which are excellent for simple reflow soldering or pre-heating a board with a lot of copper. It's not absolutely necessary if you have a toaster oven with a trustworthy thermostat, but preheating makes a lot of jobs vastly easier and less risky.
I recently converted a cheap consumer toaster oven and a hot-plate to PID controllers- I wouldn't expect their thermostats to work at all.
In both of them, the adjustable bimetalic switch that controls temperature either at the surface of hot plate or inside the oven... is located right next to the switch itself- quite far removed from the temperature it is supposed to control.
It also means that the actuation temperature varies with room temperature and airflow in the room.
I'd argue that a good quality iron is important over the station, such as a TS80p or (I haven't personally used, but looks to be a good clone) the PinePencil over any cheap station or soldering iron or knock-off station in midrange ($100-150) pricing would be ideal for most people starting out. These irons are far superior to many good quality stations I've used and are more flexible in use than them as well.
I do agree though that you should really look into good solder, flux and desolder wick at the least too since when you're starting or experimenting mistakes happen and rework is just much more manageable.
I have a TS80P and love it. It's far more powerful than the wattage would otherwise indicate. It heats up - to a precise temperature - in seconds. It is indeed superior to most soldering stations I've seen or used.
However, if I were to buy again, I'd probably go with TS100 (cheaper, seems to have a larger user base, cheaper tips and XT60 connectors are pretty flexible for DIY and simpler than USB-C) or Pinecil (cheaper in general and users are rabid fans).
EDIT: from the IronOS page, it seems that the TS100 is no longer recommended...
"Please note that Miniware started shipping TS100's using cloned STM32 Chips. While these do work with IronOS, their DFU bootloader works terribly, and it is hard to get it to successfully flash larger firmware images like IronOS without timing out. This is the main reason why the TS100 is no longer recommended."
It's thanks to heater/thermocouple in tip. It allows it to react far faster to temperature changes than old style of tips that were just a piece of metal.
I've been soldering for over a decade now, and the thing that I think matters more than anything is the solder itself.
You can do perfectly decent work with a shitty 40w pencil iron, the tip included in the pack and sone Jaycar home brand wick.
But if you cheap out on the solder, or opt for lead-free when you don't know what you're doing, you're going to have an awful time. Would strongly recommend Multicore leaded, or at the very least something a bit thicker (~1mm) with rosin core. The thin stuff that requires external flux just isn't good for beginners. It's hard to work with and your repairs will degrade over a 1-2 year period.
(That said, I don't regret dropping $x00 on my FX-888 and FR-301 which have resurrected thousands of things between them; just don't think they're strictly necessary for someone just looking to fix some random item for the first time.)
For hobby work, the TS100 is good enough. I enjoyed mine for building keyboards, until I found a used Hakko FX-888D and have been a very very happy user of it for years.
A JBC iron is spendy but great. The heating element is in the tip, similar to what you described though I don't know if it uses RF. Soldering with it is super easy, requires very little skill, mostly just remembering to use flux.
However, a reflow oven is sooo much easier. I use a Controleo 3 modified toaster oven. It sounds hacky but it really works great. There's not a better solution for the small size at any price.
Aye, though it mentions fixed temps and my CD-1BQF is variable 90-450C. Don't know if it's induction but it heats up so fast it's at temp by the time the tip moves from the holder to work.
The newer ones have similar advantage; while the old ones had thermocouple in the handle and tip being just a piece of metal, the new ones have tip with integrated heater and sensor, putting it way closer to the tip and thus reacting super-quick.
I was lucky enough to snag an old Metcal from work for free, and it's fantastic. The way they work is really cool too: it sends a high power RF signal (i.e. AC voltage) to the coil in the tip. Because of the skin effect and curie point, it will heat up until the point where the coil loses it's magnetism, resulting in a self-regulating tip temperature that doesn't need a thermo couple! [1] It responds very quickly to thermal loads, too. It's an expensive system to be sure, but totally worth it especially if you can find it used. They're also great about support even for older units, and you can get the entire schematics online if you need to make any repairs.
1. https://www.metcal.com/hand-soldering/how-smartheat-technolo...