I've been resurrecting my interest in electronics lately, and that's led me to shop around for a soldering iron suitable for kit assembly work and the like. I was looking for something affordable -- industrial quality soldering gear is pretty pricey.
At the Home Depot, I found a Weller item that looked promising. It's Weller's SP25NCN. (I think the 'CN' suffix indicates that it's the Canadian market version. The basic model number is SP25N.) Here's a view of the iron plugged in with its 'headlights' on.
(I'll reserve judgement on the efficacy of the LED lighting.)
The tool is well thought out and comfortable to use. The 25 watt heater is entirely adequate for most electronics work. (The screw-in tip, P/N MT1, has a 10-24 thread.)
Something that surprised and disappointed me, though, was the life span of the conical tip. After only a few hours of use, tip erosion was severe. It doesn't photograph all that well, but here's a view of the eroded tip.
It's as though the tip has been evaporating. That really surprised me, because I have long experience with Weller's industrial soldering tools, and I'm accustomed to Weller's soldering tips being robust, long-lasting items. I certainly wasn't expecting short tip life from a Weller product.
Anyway, I wrote to Weller about it, and they've promised to send me a replacement tip. I'll see how that one holds up. Maybe the tip that came with my SP25N was just a fluke defective one.
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An Observation On Tip Configuration
I find that the conical tip shape is less than ideal for fine work. It seems to me that molten solder wants to migrate up away from the fine, conical point of the tip, which kind of defeats the purpose. A better configuration in my experience is a chisel shape, like on this ancient Ungar miniature 'tiplet', photographed next to the SP25N's tip.
The chisel-shaped tiplet tends to accumulate molten solder right where it's needed.
The Ungar firm is no longer with us. I think it was acquired by Weller, and its excellent low-end line of soldering irons and tips was discontinued. That's a shame, because Ungar's low-end product line was good, affordable gear. I still have a very few of their 1/8" screw-in tiplets, and that led me to ponder how I might put them to good use. I came up with a way to do it.
Modifying The Weller SP25N For Undersize Tips
I drilled and tapped the barrel of the SP25N to accept a 6-32 setscrew, and that gave me a soldering iron that takes the old Ungar 1/8" tips, like so.
I've certainly voided the soldering iron's warranty, and I doubt that Weller would approve, but the arrangement works nicely. One could even use a piece of 12 or 14 AWG solid copper wire as a tip.
So now I can have the use of my old Ungar tiplets, and whatever other undersize tips I might come across.
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Update -- THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2018
UPS brought me two MT1 tips today, graciously provided by Weller as warranty replacements. It will be interesting to see how they hold up.
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Update -- SUNDAY, MAY 6,2018
The antique Ungar tiplet has seen quite a bit of use to date, and it's holding up remarkably well.
'Makes me miss Ungar's products all the more.
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I sent the Weller representative whom I'd been in email contact with a link to this blog post, hoping that I might get some response -- good, bad or indifferent -- to my review of the SP25N and my modification. I've gotten nothing back. No surprise there. In my experience, trying to converse with corporate types is futile. All you ever get from them is corporate boilerplate; all they want to hear is how fabulous their corporation's products are. You may as well talk to a potted plant, or the cat.
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