#298 Handheld Soldering Irons
Notes on my experiences with various cheap hand-held soldering irons. Currently using a GJ 907 adjustable constant temperature iron.
Notes
For most of my hand soldering, I use a relative cheap iron. I’ve gone through a couple before settling on the GJ 907 adjustable constant temperature iron that has kept me very happy since 2016.
Prior to that I had another GJ 907 for about a year before it blew up one day! I made notes below in the hope of one day diagnosing the problem.
The iron I was using before that was a pretty ordinary Newstar 30W iron. It didn’t last long in my novice hands before I threw it out in disgust and “upgraded” to the GJ 907. For hot air work I use a Saike 909D 3-in-1 hot air rework station
I know there’s a whole other level of more “professional” irons and soldering stations such as those from Hakko and Weller. Great discussions and recommendations can be found for example on:
Current Iron: GJ 907
Previous Iron: GJ 907 until it blew up one day
So one day I was soldering with my first GJ 907 and it made a loud pop! It seems a current surge stripped one of the PCB traces off the board.
Exactly why or how this occurred I never quite diagnosed. I traced the schematic (below).
I go another GJ 907 for comparison purposes, and I’ve been using that ever since without issue.
My Beginner Iron: Newstar Soldering Iron (30 watts) NSN-203
When I first started dabbling back into electronics in 2014 or so I started with a Newstar 30W iron. I can’t remember where I even picked it up from - it may have come as part of a kit or from a local hardware store. I found the iron currently listed on kinmo.com.
The Newstar 30W iron is not adjustable, and I found this made it very prone to either being underpowered for the job at hand, or burning itself up.
