Cold Heat Soldering Iron?

Pinky&Brain

Anyone used this thing?· I keep seeing the infomercial for it and have thought about getting it.· It's cordless and apparently heats up and cools down at a very rapid pace.· I can't tell how big the tip is so I am not sure if it is practical for tiny soldering but they show them doing it on the commercial.· Not that they are doing it right so who knows.

Any help on this?

Anyone even heard of it?


Jeremy (Pinky&Brain)

Jim McCorison

This was covered in the thread:

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=516557

and possible others.

Jim

Forrest

I sure wouldn't use a soldering iron that produces a spark to solder IC's - unless I wanted to kill the IC.

I've used a 15 watt soldering iron for years and it's worked well, and it only costs $8.39 - http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog_name=CTLG&category_name=CTLG_011_009_007_003&product_id=64-2051
Replacement tips are available at Radio Shack for $1

Pinky&Brain

Thank you for the info Forrest.· And Jim, I did a search before posting and didn't find anything so sorry.

Jim McCorison

Yeah, I had to struggle to find the posting. Sorry, I should have commented about that in my reply. My bad.

I then posted in the support forum about the brain dead search engine and was informed by the Jim The IT Guy that they are testing a new search engine for the forums and that it may installed next week. One can only hope!

Jim

Paul Baker

I got one from thinkgeek.com before they started advertising it on TV. I find its too awkward for fine pitch work. I use Xytronic 137ESD with the mini-wave tip and I swear by it, I can do .65 pitch work without much hassle. Ive used the cold-heat only a couple times on some not so delicate work, It works as expected. The tip is roughly 1/4" wide with a millimeter or two spacing between the electrodes, just fine for DIP work. About the spark, its just an arc flowing to the path of least resistance (the other electrode) I wouldn't worry too much about it because its a low voltage/high current apparatus and ESD is typically measured in kV (which this thing doesn't even approach). This is evidenced by the fact that the circuit doesn't complete until the non touching electrode is a very small fraction of a millimeter (I can just barely see daylight between). Remember voltage is the potential for electrons to flow, current is the flow of electrons, its high voltage thats bad for chips not current (well current thats not flowing through the chip).