What soldering station/iron should I buy?

workaccount

Hi,
I was considering buying a CSI station 1A as they get good reviews on the internet.

It seems you can only buy from a small number of places... all these places are over 16 euro for delivery and that's only from the UK. http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...ategory=106001

It's making me wonder if I did decide to spend the 16 euro on postage (which is a rip off) what would happen when I need consumables like new heads etc. Would I have to pay over the odds each time to get them shipped to me....so I'm just wondering are consumables universal. I don't know much about soldering.

Perhaps someone can recommend something else to me.

Thanks.

backboiler

A few comments on it on http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread/t-74998.html including a comparison with a workshop standard Weller station.
The thing about ebay is that you can never take the item price on its own because many sellers will increase the postage to well beyond the reasonable cost of P+P to guarantee themselves some sort of margin on no-reserve autions and/or to reduce their final value fees on buy-it-now-type listings. It's not really allowed but seems to be tolerated. You just have to take both into account and treat that as the price instead of taking the listed item price alone.

That said, €50 all in is a decent enough price if it does the job so I think I'll get one for myself. I don't know how long they'll be listed but if anyone's interested I'll throw up some comments when I get to test it out for a while. Always annoying to see them on sale in USA for half the price but by the time you ship it...

Tips: they're a bit of a variable alright but it seems to be a popular enough type of iron and there's bound to be a few suppliers about. You'd be a while going through a tip anyway unless you're using a particularly corrosive type of solder.

BTW, you posted this first on the DIY forum so if it's copper pipes and the like you're looking to solder you're going to need a different kind of soldering iron. This one is for electronic components (supposedly does a decent job with 0603 SMT (1.2 x 0.8 mm - about the size of the black space in the middle of the "#" key on your keybopard) parts) and won't be any use for plumbing.

DublinDilbert

yep as the poster says above, it all depends on what your trying to solder... as i said over on the DIY forum, make sure you get a small, medium and large tip with it....

Also mc-quilans are doing a mini hot air jet, its about the size of a dremel, and would be dead handy for some SMT stuff & the likes of shrink wrap... Its only €10, so would be very handy to have in the tool kit...

workaccount

Was going to go ahead and order it but just decided to pick one up in Maplin. Got a 30w in Maplin and a stand for 19 euro.

At the moment I just need it to solder connectors onto wires (bullet type ones). I will know then if I need a better one in the future and will be more willing to invest the punts.

backboiler

As I said I went and ordered the station the OP mentioned. It arrived yesterday and it seems I did the ebay seller a disservice by suggesting that the postage was just a guaranteed margin. They used DHL to send the item, which I'd say cost at least the £17 sterling they charged if not a few multiples of that.
I only got possession of it this morning and haven't had a chance to use it yet so no opinions on the iron itself at this stage.

workaccount

They charge the 16 euro on their main website aswell.

http://www.circuitspecialists.eu/