Soldering Station/Iron recommendation....

[Garth Wilson]

My smallest ones are Weller WM-120 with the MP131 .015" cone tip. That's only for the tiniest SMT stuff though. For the not-so-tiny SMT and for thru-hole work, I use a Weller 7760 handle and 1237-S 33-watt heater and the PL113 1/8" chisel tip. From my experience, this is better than the expensive temperature-controlled soldering stations which are usually not hot enough to transfer the heat quickly. It was a surprise to our production people when I showed that soldering a plastic switch years ago resulted in less melting and damage if they would use a hotter soldering iron so as to be able to complete the job so quickly there wasn't time for the heat to reach the plastic before everything was cooling again.

People are often afraid of damaging semiconductors with soldering heat; but in a previous job where I frequently did infrared scanning of power transistors while they were operating under the worst possible load, I saw silicon transistors actually operating with a die surface temperature at over 350°C. (They wouldn't have lasted long at that temperature, but it did not immediately destroy them.) Getting the leads of an IC up to that temperature, without doing them all at once (because you're soldering by hand with a soldering iron), won't get the die up anywhere near that hot.

Beyond that, I just use a cheap soldering-iron holder and a sponge to clean the tip.