How to irradiate a fireproof soldering iron tip. How to tin a soldering iron: preparing and caring for a soldering iron How best to tin a soldering iron

All faced the problem when soldering. The reason may be a new, just bought device or, conversely, an old one that has been used for a long time. In both cases, the situation can be easily corrected. By following the rules for the care and operation of an electrical appliance, you can avoid many problems and troubles during operation.

Most soldering irons are made using copper tips or a steel rod. Before you start working with a soldering iron, the sting will need to be given the desired shape and properly processed. Tinning will help set up the device for high-quality and productive work. Many are processed with a regular file or during the forging process. This allows you to make stronger and avoid rapid wear during soldering. Tool Features

In operation, soldering irons are best served, the core of which is fixed with a screw. This allows you to change it, pull it out and perform the necessary processing. The main thing is to make sure that the screw does not stick, then its replacement will become impossible. To do this, during use, clean the attachment point in a timely manner and periodically pull out the removable rod. To get started, a new sting needs to be irradiated and given the desired shape. In order to tin the sting, you need to cover it with solder. To do this, heat the tip well and melt the rosin with a sting. After that, the part to be soldered is covered with solder wire. Tinning allows you to extend the life of the rod.

1. Sharpen the tip of the soldering iron with a file at an angle of 45 degrees. You should get the shape of a wedge. But you can give the shape you need for soldering specific products.
2. The edge should be thin and slightly blunt.
3. If the tip of the soldering iron is not tinned, it is advisable to clean the soldering iron with a copper tip with sandpaper to remove the oxidized layer of patina.
4. You can give the sting the shape of a blade by forging.
5. Clear .
6. After sharpening, the rod must be installed and immediately tinned, otherwise it will oxidize again.

Soldering iron with copper tip

After prolonged use of the instrument sharpening and tinning will need to be repeated.

When overheated, dross may form on the rod. To clean them, the rod is pulled out and treated with fine sandpaper. Cover the rod with graphite by rubbing it with the lead of a simple pencil. Clean heating element scale can be removed by lightly tapping on it. After complete cleaning, the rod is installed in place. When working, try not to overheat the tip, otherwise you will need to restore it again. The solder will not hold and the tip will need to be tinned and burned again. Remember the rules for working with a soldering iron and how to tin it.

fireproof tip

There is a working part, which is covered with a fireproof compound. These stings must be handled very carefully. A damp cloth or dishwashing sponge works well.

Why can't a file be used? Because with an aggressive impact, the fireproof composition will be removed, and the tip will smoke, and the tin will stick. Without mechanical impact, the service life will be longer. To irradiate the tip of such a soldering iron, you need to lower a piece of solder into the molten rosin, then, when the solder begins to melt, you need to slowly start rubbing the tip of the rod against a wooden block. Then wipe it with a damp cloth, removing oxides from it, and then move a heated soldering iron over the solder. After tinning, it remains to wipe the stinger with a cloth - and you can get to work.

Tinning protects the metal surface from corrosion. If the new rod is not tinned, you need to clean it of dirt and grease. To do this, we heat the rod and apply a flux paste on it, after boiling and spreading over the surface, the remnants of contaminants and flux are removed with soapy water or gasoline.

Due to overheating, shells appear on the rod, they damage the copper tip and have to be tinned again. To avoid these problems, clean after work, the remains of tin and rosin. Wipe all working parts of the tool with a cloth or paper. Timely cleaning will help extend the life of the soldering iron.

When you first turn on a new soldering iron in the network, it happens that smoke begins to come out of its body, this burns out varnishes and fats that fall during assembly and preservation. Therefore, it is advisable to turn on the new soldering iron for the first time in a well-ventilated room or put the soldering iron out the window to the street, connecting it through an extension cord.

Before proceeding with soldering, the tip of a new soldering iron needs to be filed with a file that is convenient for a particular type of soldering. If the end of the tip, after heating the soldering iron for 15-20 minutes, is forged, then it will last longer, since the copper will condense and will not dissolve so quickly when soldering in the solder.

The most versatile form of the sting is angular and cut. Less commonly, knife-shaped, this form of a soldering iron tip is convenient if you need to warm up at the same time, for example, a number of connector contacts or microcircuit pins when soldering from a printed circuit board.

To be able to solder some radioelements with a soldering iron, you have to make a special tip, such as in the photo. A tip of this shape allows you to solder non-destructive SMD components with a soldering iron - resistors, diodes, capacitors and other radio elements. A sting of a standard form cannot perform such soldering.

After the soldering iron tip is formed, its working planes must be tinned. To do this, warm the soldering iron to operating temperature, quickly touch the sting in turn to rosin and solder, and rub the sting on a flat piece of wood.

A sign of heating the soldering iron tip to the required temperature is the boiling of rosin with copious release of steam when it is touched with a soldering iron tip. If it is not possible to tin the sting, then you need to clean its working surface again and tin it again. Signs of good soldering are when the entire surface is covered with a thin layer of solder.

Soldering iron stand

Before soldering, the soldering iron must be warmed up. In this case, the body of the soldering iron is heated to a temperature of 300 ° C and in order to protect surrounding objects from damage, it is necessary to exclude the contact of the soldering iron with them. For this, a soldering iron stand is used, which, in addition to the protection function, is a kind of table on which flux, solder, and foam rubber are usually placed to clean the soldering iron tip and work on tinning the wires.

Factory-made soldering iron stands are not convenient to use, mainly due to their small size. A soldering iron stand is easy to make yourself.

For a 40 W soldering iron, I have a stand made of a sheet of plywood 5 mm thick and 18 cm × 25 cm in size. The larger table is convenient for work, I puddle the surface of the parts on it, shake off excess solder from the tip of the soldering iron. To support the hot part of the soldering iron to the plywood at a distance of 10 mm from each other, two cups from the call of the old telephone are screwed with screws. They are convenient in size, at the same time they serve to store rosin and pieces of solder.

Due to the round shape, the cups touch the soldering iron only at two points and therefore take little heat from it. A crocodile radio is still attached to the table, which holds the foam rubber for cleaning the sting. An easily removable mount is necessary to moisten the foam rubber (wet foam rubber removes dirt from the sting better) and, if necessary, replace it when worn. I fixed the crocodile in the following way. I flattened the part intended for inserting the fork, and slipped it under the cup.

For a 10 W soldering iron, the stand is somewhat different. It is a plastic box in which a step-down transformer from 220 V to 12 V is placed. The support for the soldering iron is bent from a cut iron sheet, which is also the side cover of the box. A sheet of fiberglass is screwed on top, for tinning parts.

Soldering tool

You should not save on the tool, it should be enough in stock to perform any type of soldering with a soldering iron.

The quality and aesthetic appearance of a solder joint directly depends on the set of available tools. When soldering with a soldering iron, the parts are very hot and cannot be held in your hands. Therefore, we need different sizes of tweezers, pliers.

If the jaws of the tweezers are sharpened as shown in the photo, then the parts will not slip out during soldering. It will also be convenient for such tweezers to hold small screws when they are tightened.

For cleaning from oxides and removing insulation, you will need wire cutters, a knife, files, a car brush, and sandpaper. To give the wires the desired shape, for example, the end of a thick conductor for a threaded connection when connected to a socket or switch, you will need round-nose pliers.

Microcircuits are well soldered using a medical needle, suction or copper braid from a shielded coaxial cable.

It is convenient to release the metallized holes in the printed circuit boards that are swollen with solder after desoldering the parts with a toothpick, a sharply sharpened match or a sewing needle. To do this, on the one hand, heat the solder in the hole with a soldering iron, and on the other hand, push it out using the above tool.

The soldering process is familiar to anyone who has ever held a soldering iron in their hands. The quality of work depends on the correct temperature, the composition of the solder, the flux and the condition of the tip. The part of the soldering iron directly located in the soldering zone can be made of ceramic or copper.

The traditional material is certainly copper, due to its excellent thermal conductivity. And it has good adhesion. However, this metal is unstable, and wears out quickly - in other words, it burns out or dissolves in solder. Therefore, copper tips are often coated with a thin layer of nickel or silver.

Therefore, most radio amateurs (especially the old school ones) prefer to work with pure copper. However, such a tip has a serious drawback - heated copper is instantly covered with oxide. This thin layer not only has zero adhesion, but also reduces heat transfer. Therefore, the working tip should always be covered with a thin layer of solder - tinned.

It would seem that when you first turned it on, you covered the sting with tin, and work. However, here, too, the properties of copper do a disservice. Under a layer of solder, the copper base burns out. Slags are formed (and they have no adhesion), and the solder coating quickly flows to the place of soldering. You are again distracted from work, and begin to clean the sting. Let's talk about this process in more detail.

Important! Never attempt to use abrasive material on coated ceramic tips and tips.

In the first case, you will split the material, in the second, you will turn an expensive accessory into a simple copper bar.

How to tin a soldering iron with a copper tip?

The coating process itself does not cause difficulties. Any kind of molten solder - tin, lead or silver, fits perfectly on heated copper. Under one condition - the metal must be clean. And this is possible only in a cold state. Temperature catalyzes oxidation, reducing adhesion to zero. Cold solder doesn't melt. Is the circle closed?

If you know how to clean a soldering iron tip, you can restore it to working order in a few minutes.

Removal of scale, slag, burnt residues of rosin and plastic insulation can also be done on a cold soldering iron. It would be more correct to pull out (carefully) the copper rod from the body, and clean it separately from the heater.

Important! The part of the rod that is inside the heating element is also oxidized.

Detailed video on how to restore a fireproof soldering iron tip

This is not important, the heat from the spiral is still well transferred. Worse, when scale appears on the inside of the sting. With such pollution, heat transfer deteriorates, and electricity is wasted.

Many domestic soldering irons are made with a copper tip. For example, EPSN. The copper tip must be treated properly before the soldering iron can be used. The sting must be given a form convenient for soldering.

Some process it with a simple file, and especially creative people prefer to forge it. As a result, the tip of the soldering iron becomes more durable and its dissolution in solder occurs much less during the soldering process. But sooner or later everyone wonders how to tin a soldering iron with a copper tip.

Soldering iron features

It is best to buy soldering irons, in which the tip is attached with a special screw. Such a sting can always be easily removed and processed again. Of course, if it sticks during use, then this process will not be so easy. Therefore, when using soldering irons with removable tips, it is necessary to remove them from time to time and clean the attachment point so that it does not stick.

After the sting is given the desired shape, it must be tinned. The phrase "how to tin a soldering iron tip" should be understood as covering the working area of ​​the tip with a thin layer of solder. It's not too difficult to do this. It is enough to turn on the soldering iron in the network, wait until it heats up to a temperature at which the rosin begins to melt, and then dip the sting into it.

After the soldering iron is heated to its operating temperature, it is necessary to cover the part of it with which soldering is performed from all sides with solder. It is better to take small pieces or solder made in the form of a wire for this. A soldering iron with a power of 25 watts will not be able to melt a large piece of solder.

soldering tip shape

The shape of the sting may be different. The choice depends on the habits of the one who uses the soldering iron, and, of course, on the type of work performed with it. Some people prefer a cone-shaped soldering iron tip, others a 45-degree cut.

The fact is that even transistors hidden in SOT-23 cases, SMD parts or capacitors with 1206 size resistors can be soldered with a sharpened soldering iron tip. with a power of about 25 watts, in which the tip is processed in the form of the letter P. It must be remembered that this is done before the soldering iron tip is tinned.

This is done in order not to overheat the conclusions of the part, which happens when soldering with a soldering iron with an ordinary tip. And with the help of such a U-shaped sting, the conclusions are soldered immediately together, and the part is easily released from the place of soldering.

It is better to use a more powerful soldering iron when performing work on the mass desoldering of radio components, while using a power regulator. It's not that hard to make your own. In this case, a soldering iron with a power of up to 65 watts is suitable.

There are quite frequent cases when, during soldering, rosin suddenly begins to smoke. This means that the soldering iron is overheated. You have to turn it off from the network and wait until it cools down. At the same time, if the soldering iron cools down below normal, it starts to solder poorly. Using a power regulator, such problems can be easily avoided, and work becomes much easier, and from the necessary preliminary work there will be nothing left but to tin the soldering iron tip.

Soldering iron sharpening

• The soldering iron tip is sharpened with a file at an angle of 30-40 degrees.
• The edge is left 1 mm wide and slightly blunt.
• On a new soldering iron, you only need to sand the tip with fine sandpaper to remove the patina. Patina is greenish copper oxide.
• If the store sharpening does not suit you, then you need to remove the sting and forge it yourself, giving it the shape of a concave blade. This method has another plus - the metal will become less susceptible to corrosion.
• To give the sting a finished look, it remains to process it with a file with a fine notch.

How to tin a sting

To tin a sting means to cover it with a thin layer of solder. For this you need:

• Turn on the soldering iron and wait until the copper rod turns a reddish-orange hue. You should not wait longer, because the rod may burn.
• Dip the entire tip in rosin and melt a small piece of solder.
• Coat the entire surface of the tip with solder. It will cover better if you first rub it on a wooden surface.

How to tin a fireproof sting?

On sale you can find soldering irons, in which the working part is covered with a special fireproof composition. This layer is very thin and in no case should it be cleaned, as is the case with a conventional soldering iron. The question arises: "How to tin a soldering iron tip if it cannot be cleaned in the usual way?" It is necessary to use a special sponge. The one with which housewives usually wash dishes, or a piece of cloth previously soaked in water, is also suitable. When using such soldering irons, it should be remembered that any mechanical influences significantly reduce their service life.

To irradiate the tip of such a soldering iron, you need to lower a piece of solder into the molten rosin, rub the tip on a damp cloth, removing oxides from it, and then move the heated soldering iron over the solder. After tinning, it remains to wipe the tip with a rag, and the soldering iron is ready to work.

When working with any type of soldering iron, you should try not to overheat them above 300 degrees C, otherwise you will have to tin the tip again. And of course, anyone who uses a soldering iron should know how to properly tin a soldering iron tip.

Working with radio electronics involves soldering materials. It is easy to learn this, and if there are incomprehensible nuances, then with experience they will disappear. The tool requires maintenance for its quality work. The master needs to be able to correctly tin the soldering iron tip so that the solder holds. The tool must not be damaged. The quality of soldering depends on the correct actions when processing the base.

Coating features

Simple type soldering irons traditionally have a copper tip. The material has been used ever since the invention of the tool due to its high thermal conductivity. But there is a drawback - the ability to high wear. Copper burns out or dissolves in the solder. The shortcoming had to be eliminated, and manufacturers began to apply an additional coating of nickel or silver.

Nickel has high strength and does not wear out. Long service life is the advantage of nickel plating. The disadvantage is poor adhesion. Such a tip does not hold solder well. Soldering can be performed only when solder is supplied directly to the work area. The working area is heated with a sting, then a small part of solder or solder paste is placed. Seizure comes from heat.

Silver has good adhesion, but is a poor conductor of heat. In addition, the material is expensive. Over time, the silver wears out and exposes the copper base. This is because the silver coating dissolves into the solder.

Spraying features complicate operation and maintenance. Therefore, radio amateurs, especially the older generation, prefer copper soldering irons. But the copper sting has a drawback - hot copper instantly oxidizes. Interaction with air occurs only on a thin layer, but this is sufficient for zero adhesion. Heat is also transferred worse. Way out - the tip should always be covered with a thin layer of solder.

Tin should not be applied before soldering, because copper begins to burn out under its layer. At the burnout site, slags appear, due to which there is no adhesion. The master begins to be distracted from work.

Abrasive materials wear down the coating. Nickel or ceramic is applied in a thin layer on the tip - that's why you can't grind them down. An expensive tip will turn into a copper bar.

The process of preparing a copper sting

The coating process is not difficult. Molten solder fits well on hot copper, but with one condition - it must be clean. This can only be achieved at low temperatures. Oxidation accelerates with increasing temperature and adhesion disappears. Cold solder cannot be stuck to the tip because it does not melt. It turns out a vicious circle.

Slag, rosin and plastic residues, scale and other debris can be removed on a cold tool. The rod is pulled out before this operation so as not to damage the heater. The sting inside the heater also oxidizes, which impairs heat transfer. Electricity due to scale overcomes excess resistance and is wasted.

Before you tin a soldering iron with a copper tip, it must be cleaned of dirt. Do it with a file or sandpaper. The material should be sharpened to a clean layer so that the appearance is like new. It's easier to do it with sandpaper. The surface is polished to a smooth state - so the oxidation is slower.

The rate of oxidation can be reduced by binding the sting. Do it with a hammer on an anvil. With gentle blows, they strengthen the surface and give shape to the copper bar. Next, they proceed to the tinning process until it is covered with slags.

Methods for tinning a copper sting:

Proper preparation will allow you not to be nervous at the initial stage of work. After a while, the process needs to be redone due to the fact that copper begins to oxidize.

Tinning of modern coating

Ceramic and nickel tips do not need to be tinned. Manufacturers read this way, but this is nothing more than advertising. Modern coatings are also prone to oxidation, only the process is slower. Tinning the soldering iron tip of a modern type soldering station in the usual way will not work - the coating will be erased.

Cleaning is carried out with a wet cloth from cotton fabric. They take hard rosin, where they put a little solder. The tip should be rubbed with a cloth and immediately dipped in rosin. A piece of solder is recessed vertically down. The solder melts and wraps around the cone of the tip.

Cleaning during operation

Correctly irradiating the soldering iron is important not only during preparation for work. After some soldering time, it may happen that the material does not stick to the base again. This happens after 15 minutes. Copper burns under a layer of tinning. There are several ways to properly tin a soldering iron while working.

block of wood

An unhewn block of wood should always be at the hand of the master. Conifers are used, since such wood has natural rosin. I pour flux on the wood and put a little solder. As soon as scale appears on the sting, rub it against the tree. During this process, the base is cleaned and tinned.

metal sponge

The method of instant tinning the base of the soldering iron. Factory soldering machines are equipped with a similar device in the form of a steel sponge in a container.

It is convenient for the master to use this method, but it can be improved. The bottom of the sponge is smeared with flux - soldering fat. With a shallow immersion of the sting, it will simply be cleaned. And if you apply solder to the base and dip it deep, to the base of the sponge, then cleaning will be combined with tinning.

The method is optimal for modern tips with ceramic or nickel coating. Even soldering irons with a thin copper tip can be cleaned and tinned this way. Damage to the device is difficult to cause even with strong pressure.

The use of rosin

A method for a traditional tool with a simple copper tip. The metal quickly oxidizes and after 10-15 minutes the solder can no longer be picked up. If you clean it separately from the flux, then the master will not have time to bring the soldering iron - oxidation passes so quickly.

Clean the instrument because of this in rosin. A file is placed under the soldering iron, you can use steel wire. Then rub with a sting until the flux melts. Solder should not be.

Classical method and prevention

The previous methods were invented by the master relatively recently. Our ancestors, even our fathers, did tinning a little differently. This required a file with a fine notch., a workbench for work (can be replaced with a board), rosin and the most refractory solder.

Procedure:

The procedure will take 10 minutes, no less. A large amount of preparation time is paid off by the fact that you can work with the tool for several days without much preparation.

Working for a long time will cause overheating. An increase in temperature increases the oxidation and the rod has to be prepared for work more often. In order to avoid unnecessary procedures, you should follow some rules.

Preventive measures against oxidation:

The tool must always be kept ready. After a long period of inactivity, the soldering iron tip is not tinned due to strong oxidation. Restoring the adhesion of the coating, especially from copper, is carried out with rosin. After immersion in it, the sting is rubbed with a cotton cloth. During operation, the soldering iron also needs to be cleaned periodically.