Suggestion soldering iron/station for rookies

Community General Discussion
1

Hi guys,
I'm totally new to Arduino!
For now, all that I have is a small Arduino-mini board and a matrix board.

I'm searching for a soldering iron or a soldering station with a good price/quality ratio that can help me to move my first steps in the electronic world!
Looking around I saw the Hakko fx-888d, but it is a bit too expensive for me, and probably also excessive considering my level.
On the other side the soldering iron that I bought for 5 euros in a Chinese shop was very terrible. It was going from times on which it was not even able to melt the tin to times on which it was overheating and melting itself.

Do you have any suggestion about a good model for my purposes, and about which brands are good in general?

Thanks in advance

2

what's your budget? that's probably where you need to start.

3

I would say indicatively around 30 - 60 Eur but I have not a specific budget in mind for me it is important the price/quality ratio

4

I had one of those, and it broke.

I now use a Yihua 937D, its plenty good enough, low cost, and spare bits and irons are cheap to.

Perfectly happy with it, been soldering electronis stuff for 50+ years.

And because the Yihuas are so cheap, I actually have two on my bench, one has a general purpose pointy bit, the other a very fine pointy bit for SMT work. No longer the hassle of swapping bits all the time.

5

What are your purposes?

6

@dougp
I want to learn Arduino so I would like to buy a decent soldering not too professional.
To be honest I don't even know which kind of uses I need it for as I'm a very noob!
I would like to follow the Arduino projects that I find online, I guess I will need it mainly to melt the tin to solder cables and components.

7

Thanks, I will have a look to the Yihua 937D.
Just to know, is Yihua a known good brand or you are suggesting it because you had a good experience with this specific model?

8

Collect/sell some bottles and buy this iron :+1:

9

Definitely bite the bullet and get the Hakko.

10

Whatever you pick consider getting a few different size soldering tips. If you do decide on the Yihua consider the 939 Kit. It comes with multiple tips.

I have solder (all 63/37) in 0.38, 0.8 & 1.2 mm diameters. You likely don't need all but you should have a small size if you think you might be soldering SMD devices.

A very crude general rule of solder tip size is, it should be about the size of what you are soldering. So if trying to solder a 2.00 mm diameter wire you don't want to have a super small tip. The same goes for small SMD devices.

11

A thing you don't know yet: you need different tips for different jobs. therefore, you need a soldering iron that accepts multiple tips

which fit

mine is an older model, and it is at least 30 years old, and it is reliable as an anvil.

12

99.9% of the time, I use the T18-BR02 HAKKO curved tip.

image

13

No comment, I did not conduct extensive market reasearch before buying one.

They work for me, maybe if I get much beyond 50+ years soldering experience, I will find a show stopping problem with them, but I doubt it.

14

Your level now. As you learn and become proficient you'll grow into it.

15

I use TS100 and am very satisfied.

16

I would say get something with variable heat, changeable tips and that can go up to 450°C+

I'm using a Weller as well, something similar to this but an older model (not within your budget though)

71otiYas-gL.SL1500
71otiYas-gL.SL15001500×1088 79.4 KB

17

Ok, thanks all for the suggestions! :slight_smile:

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