Soldering gun, not iron.

Can anyone recommend a good quality soldering gun. Cost isn't an issue as my customer is paying for it.

I am rewiring a car and I need something that is quick and reliable!

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Weller works fine for me.

MichaelG.

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http://www.mytoolshed.co.uk/p9780/Weller_8100UD_Expert_Soldering_Gun/product_info.html?utm_source=googleversafeed&vfsku=9780&gpla=pla&gclid=CLz7y7zXmtMCFYoK0wodJrYCiw

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 10/04/2017 21:03:53

Which model of Weller gun is that?

Just posted the link

MichaelG.

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P.S. ... At the risk of stating the obvious: they only work on AC

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 10/04/2017 21:06:03

It's a bloody big transformer that sends a big fat current through the bit to heat it up dead quickly.

I have a Well 125 gun that I purchased in 1965 and it works just fine. Wonderful fast!  Very simple. Not much to go wrong!!

Pete

Edited By Peter Krogh on 10/04/2017 21:33:16

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Yup

Nowt much to it ... but it works.

MichaelG.

A friend of mine uses a hot air soldering gun for soldering car electrics.

I use a mains type also, it heats up quickly and copes with car wiring easily, maybe not battery cable. The little light I thought was a gimic is useful. It's little Draper, from memory Also has the advantage of not using power when it's idle.

Please forgive my total ignorance on this topic but i'd like to ask,

What advantages does a gun type iron have over a normal iron?

Michael W

Out of choice, I wouldn't solder as over time, the wire snaps just at the solder joint, I don't know why (Flux ?), but it has failed me on a couple of vintage car re-builds. Funny how the old screw down connectors (Typical Lucas type) seem to go rusty, corrode and still work. The cheap crimp terminals are made of thinner metal than top quality terminals and the cheaper ones with bullet ends are frail especially when you pull them appart a couple of times.
BobH

Doesn't need to be left on, ready to start fires and cause nasty burns. And by heating up rapidly, it isn't an inconvenience. Not much use for small surface mount components but for through hole compts and sticking bits of metal together they are apparently pretty handy.

Here's another rather earnest Canadian* (I'm guessing by his accent), explaining how they are useful:

<grease>

Weller! Weller! Weller!

Tell me more! Tell me more!

</grease>

I'll get me coat...

I believe the solder tracks back up the multi-cored wire and acts as a stress point where it stops, hence the need for strain relief incorporating the outer insulation.

Personally, I think the problem is often too much solder, rather than too little; frequently caused by an iron with too little heat capacity.

That is, one needs to offer the iron to the joint for too long to get it hot enough to melt the solder, thereby heating up too much of the wire, albeit slowly; this allows the solder to track too far up the wire.

It's not just about speed and cost that the highest quality, mil spec, connectors tend to be crimped rather than soldered.

Regards

Bill

I have a Weller soldering gun, but prefer an ordinary electric iron, I have a choice of 80 year old 65 W Solon, or a 175 W Weller. I find the gun really has insufficient amount of metal in the heated area to make a good joint quickly, I remember having the same problem 50 years or so ago on the few soldered joints required on wires on some of the aircraft I worked on. The solder tends to make copper wire brittle.

Ian S C

We used to use the weller guns for quick and dirty cautery in the late 60's but if you didn't want to get bitten was a good idea to make sure plenty of anaesthetic about. The tips used to burn out quite quickly though - a corrosive effect of burn blood and tissue or just the temp of burning carbon?

+1 for those observations Bill, it is remarkable how far the solder will wick up the cable if too much solder is applied, the insulation retreats as the wire is heated so exposes a stress point. I believe crimp connectors are more reliable by quite a high factor. In control panel wiring there seems to be a move to spring clamp connections with bare ends to the wire, in my experience these are very reliable and cheap to install as they are quick compared to lugging a cable and screwing into a terminal. The downside of many wiring systems is that the cable and terminations should be of a matching spec to create a sound connection, too often people use what they have and the connection will be compromised.

Mike

When you laying under a dash board upside down with your arse in the air, the last thing you want is hot soldering iron adding to your predicament!

I've got a 1980's write-up on this somewhere that from memory pretty much confirms what you say. Soldering isn't the best way of making a cable joint if the wiring is subject to vibration, flexing or thermal contraction. Crimping was said to be much more reliable than soldering but it had to be done properly. I remember wire-wrap was supposed to be 'good' too, but that technology seems to have disappeared entirely. I wonder why?

Dave

Wire wrapping does seem to have fallen by the wayside, I had a fault on a robot once where I had to get the entire card cage out to access the backplane which was wire wrapped, turned out that the wire was too tightly pulled against one of the posts and had shorted out, took seconds to fix but half a day of diagnosis and dismantling. I think wire wrapped backplanes have fallen out of use for a number of reasons, multi-layer PCB backplanes with plated through holes are much less labour intensive and equipment seems to be more modular with either ribbon cable interconnections or fast serial links. LSI has also put much more onto one board so racks of cards are less common.

Mike