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Why shouldn't I buy the cheapest soldering iron I can find?

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No Lifer
I'm 26 and for the first time in my life I actually need to solder some metal to fix some earphones I have. I think radioshack should have a soldering kit for very cheap. Any good reason to get something better? My electrical skills are never likely to go above putting batteries into something in the correct orientation, so should I get anything good?
 
Cosidering that at this rate, you wont need it again until you're 52, you probably don't need something better.
 
I bought a cheapy 25 watt at Canadian Tire yesterday to fix one of my patch cables, i'm happy with it. 🙂 It cost $9cdn.
 
I think they took it down from their website, but Radio Shack had a $5 off anything coupon the past few days. I used it to pick up a soldering iron. Now, I just need to find something to solder, since I've never done it before.
 
I have this one. It only takes a few seconds to heat up to soldering temp, and there's a built in light. Not bad for $13, IMO.

Of course, for headphones you may want something a bit more precise. Get a gun/iron with a decent wattage rating, otherwise you'll be waiting for a few minutes for it to heat up. My old 17 watt iron took forever to get up to temp. I haven't touched it since I bought that gun at RS 4 years ago.
 
A gun is good for soldering two wires together, for anything more then that you really need an iron. Just grab the cheapest one you can find, definitely don't need anything great for what you want to do.
 
A cheap 20-30 watter should be fine. Although not a necessity, consider also buying a stand that includes a sponge for safety and convenience.
 
Well I bought the cheapest at walmart. $9.95 with two extra tips and some solder. After mildly burning my fingers everything is now good and the earphones work 😀
 
i have a badass iron. once you get a good one, you will never get one of those POS $20-$30 irons every again. if you want the real deal, get a Hakko. they are the mercedes of soldering irons. tons of tips, electrical component safe (depolarized tips), base-station/iron separate units, not built-in 1 crap, etc. plus, you can get TONS of tips, and i mean TONS, and they last for a very long time if you know how to tin them correctly.

however, if you dont do anything with small electronics and you just want to solder pieces of stuff together for fun, then sure, its a waste of money. if you want to do anything that takes skill/precision, you will be up sh!t creek without a nice iron like a Hakko.


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there is a good example of how awesome they are. that is the exact model i have (the first one). it heats up to max in less than 20 seconds (max is like 400-500C i think...) and has a very high quality handle. i should be a salesman for these people.
 
i have a high end Weller Iron at work that i got from digikey for $250. If Hakkos are mercedes, then Wellers are the BMW's of irons. Im eyeing one of the Hakko's for my home use iron.

though...for the purposes of fixing headphones, any old radioshack iron will work.
 
Originally posted by: cerebusPu
i have a high end Weller Iron at work that i got from digikey for $250. If Hakkos are mercedes, then Wellers are the BMW's of irons. Im eyeing one of the Hakko's for my home use iron.

though...for the purposes of fixing headphones, any old radioshack iron will work.
Click to expand...

wellers are nice, but i like Hakkos more...ESD irons from hakko seem to actually work better...just my observation
 
I got this radio shack dual wattage iron. Unless it's just the quality of iron, I plain suck at soldering. I've tried soldering many times with the $5 iron I got from MCM years ago, and a couple times with the radio shack iron, but still get highly frustrated every time. I just can't figure it out. Usually the whole component and wire insulation gets too hot before the solder melts. Then I can't get the wire to stay down in the solder before it dries, if I can even get it buried down in it in the first place. That's if there's already solder there that someone else put (ie. mfg). If I have to put solder, I can't figure out how to hold the wire, place solder, and the iron at the same time. So I put the solder first. Is that right? And it doesn't look pretty.
Is it the cheap iron?
 
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