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Found out my cheap soldering iron was running 100 degrees too cold this whole time
Was checking out some repair forums last night and stumbled onto a thread about temperature accuracy. Grabbed my little multimeter with the temp probe and tested my iron at what it claimed was 350C. It was reading 250C. No wonder those tiny SMD joints were giving me trouble and I kept cooking pads. Has anyone else tested their iron temp and gotten a nasty surprise like that?
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patkelly16d ago
Well, I'm not sure that's entirely fair to the tool. A lot of those cheap irons are calibrated at the factory with a certain tip and a specific amount of air flow, so your reading might be off because of how you're measuring it. If you're getting clean solder joints and the tip isn't burning up, the actual temperature is just a number that doesn't matter much.
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lucas_grant8316d ago
Temperature is just a number anyway, who cares.
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riverowens15d ago
Oh man, did you check the tip you were using too? I had the exact same thing happen with my $20 iron where it was reading 90 degrees low on the chisel tip but only 30 off on the fine point, so the calibration totally depends on what you have attached. I just started turning it up to 400C on the display knowing it was actually around 310C and that honestly fixed all my cold joint problems overnight.
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