Soldering gun?

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RideTheCrash

RideTheCrash

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Someone picked me up a soldering gun and I know that soldering irons are better for electronics. All I'll really be using it on is probably cables, but I'm not sure if it's worth taking back or not. It's labelled as a "Pistol Grip Soldering Iron" and doesn't look as a bulky as some other guns but it's not one of those double barrel looking ones either. It's 35 watts, which I guess isn't overkill either?
 
Yeah, people say not to use them, I dunno. Some electronics cannot take excess heat, it would probably work better there, but cables need a fair amount of heat to get a good flow.
 
35 watts sounds ok. i think it's more of a bulk problem. prob ok for cables though
 
It's the wattage you have to watch. The soldering guns that everyone warns you about are the 100 watt ones with the trigger and the looped element. It sounds like you just got a normal soldering iron in the shape of a gun.
 
Okay, thanks guys. On the packaging it mentions for electronics work...but you never know. I figured it was more of a size issue as well. I doubt I'll be working on any sort of circuit board so I should be okay.

Oh yeah, and the tip on this is removable is looks like.
 
I personally find pistol grip soldering guns to be awkward. When putting cables together I often use one hand to hold the soldering iron and manipulate solder or wires. The pencil style soldering irons are a little easier to work with in my opinion.

The soldering station I use is the Weller 921ZX. I believe it is no longer made, but the most similar model currently available from Weller is this:

http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/weller/solder/wlc100.htm

One thing I like better about the 921ZX is that you can select the temperature of the iron, whil the newer one just has a 1 through 5 selection. There are some great digital soldering stations now though, where you can see on an LCD what your tip temperature is. Like this one looks good:

http://www.hmcelectronics.com/cgi-bin/scripts/product/1980-0436
 
I've only used a soldering iron before and it was a pencil style. I agree that this is probably a bit more awkward, but oh well.
 
The problem I have with the guns is #1) you only get heat when you pull the trigger (not enough hands as it is), #2) working in tight spots can suck and melt things you don't want melted and #3) many/most soldering guns get to be a real intermittent pain in the ass...the screws on the side where the tip is inserted into the coil are always coming loose and this means intermittent operation.

Can you tell, I hate the guns...when you get up into the high output units, of course that's the only way to go but for smaller stuff, the pen style is nice.
 
This one actually doesn't have a trigger, I believe it just operates like a pen style, but I haven't had a chance to test it out yet. It's pretty small, doesn't seem like a big bulky gun to me fortunately.
 
I want to do some practice first. I have a bunch of old speaker wire (the kind with the bare twisted wire at the ends) and 2 1/4" TS jacks accidently bought from RadioShack a few years ago. I assume soldering the wire onto these jacks would create...well the same thing except it has 1/4" jacks on the end. I wouldn't really any use for it, but what the hell...

So that leads me to ask...which wire to ground, which to tip?
 
You would end up with speaker cable. Always a useful thing to have around.

It really doesn't matter which wire is +, as long as you do the same thing at both ends. I always use the marked wire for +, other people do the opposite.
 
For speaker wire, it doesn't matter, as long as it's the same on both ends. For other TS stuff, the shield wire goes to the sleeve, signal to tip. For TRS, shield to pin 1, the others again don't matter, as long as they are the same at both ends.
 
Okay. I wish I had a proper amp with 1/4" outputs so I could make good use of it. For now, I'm still using an old hi-fi amp. Thanks.
 
One more thing...these TS jacks don't have any sort of cable relief clamps on them? Does that matter?
 
Good 'nuff.

Well I gave it a shot and it was successful...

I only soldered a jack on one end and plugged that into one of headphone jacks on my board and hooked it up to a speaker. It works, so that's cool.
 
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