Yes, I fully agree. I don't think one can really solder properly with
the unregulated ones, it's like metallic hot glue at best.
You are right it's something one must try to find the ideal setting,
without being afraid of a little temperature. The components are made
for it, and stresses might actually be lower if soldering time is
reduced.
I'm not sure how accurate the hot air thermostat is, it shows like
100C right when I switch it on. Maybe you want to check the soldering
iron to see if the indicated temperature is precise (if you have no
suitable thermometer slowly increase the temperature until solder with
known melting point gets soft). It doesn't matter if you always use
the same setting, but we couldn't compare numbers if they are off.
ST
On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 9:32 PM, Henry Liu <henryjliu@...> wrote:
> I'm pretty sure one could easily model the process with the heat equation:
> du/dt= K ∗ grad2 u = 0
>
> However the basic idea is that either it works or it doesn't. If it doesn't
> just turn up the temperature until it does. That's why a high wattage
> temperature controlled iron is useful. If it senses the tip dropping below
> the set temperature then the power kicks in and heats it fast until it does
> but the total temperature doesn't exceed the max set.
>
> I think that's a lot better than having a hot iron with no temperature
> feedback loop.
>
> I burned a lot of soldermask and lifted a lot of pads with the $10-30 irons
> from radioshack. $100 to get the temperature controlled one (with the hot
> air) was way better.
>