So aside from a bunch of creature comforts & relatively irrelevant details, (as what most people care about is how well & reliably does it do the job you need it to do, all the rest is stuff that people adjust to without really thinking about it), there is no difference & they do the same job perfectly fine? In, which case the cheaper one is better to go with? Because if not, then the ACTUAL IMPORTANT info, like actually USING the device & whether they can do the same job to the same quality MIGHT be a more relevant & important thing to focus on, & SHOULD have been in the video. By the way, Flux. Not tinning material, Solder & flux.
If you keep tools longer than a few years, those "creature comforts" make a HUGE difference. The most expensive option will stand the test of time IMO. But sure, you could get by with a cheapie. Watching both devices melt solder would have done nothing to show the differences in the products as they both heat up to the temperature needed to do that task. I don't know what you expected to gleam from seeing that happen... As the professionals know, most pots of tinning material are made of molten tin, with a zinc chloride flux. Simply calling it flux is inaccurate. And I hope you took your heart medication after watching this video as it appears to have stressed you out! If my review was that horrid, I would suggest filming your own conclusions. Thanks for watching non-the-less.
@@IllInformedHuman Regarding the tinning material vs solder & flux matter, I mean, we could go back & forth on that all day, but I'll admit, I was being a bit overly pedantic on honestly trivial minutia, so fair enough. point taken. Regarding the more salient criticism of the video though, I think you're missing the point of what I'm getting at, & in all fairness, perhaps I could have done a better job at communicating it. When I'm referring to things like creature comforts, for example, I mean things like how well the wire sheathing holds up to potential burns. I mean, sure, more durability is nice to have, but it's fairly inconsequential, especially if your using proper cable management practice to minimize excess slack of the cable, as doing so not only keeps the cable clear of the tip of the iron, but also minimizes the risk of things like bumping, unexpected wiggling or accidentally stepping on or otherwise disturbing the cable could cause the iron to jerk or wiggle in your hand, which you don't want in such precision work. What I mean by more valuable data is things like the tips themselves, for example. I mean you said the 2 had similar tips, but weren't exchangeable & that the cheaper one didn't come with a tip holder, while the Weller did. Again, nice to have creature comforts, but doesn't really give insight to the more work centric use cases. What is the availability of tips? What's the variety of tips? How well do they hold up under use before they start breaking down? How accurate is the actual temp vs the reported temp? How granular is the temp control? How consistent is the temp? how high & how low can it go? These are more use case specific details that I think are more salient because, I mean if you're just tinning & soldering together splices of decent gauge wire, heck, any soldering iron would do the trick, but if say for example, you're doing component level work on electronics, there's a lot more to account for. In that same regard, when working with surface mount components, sure a flat chisel tip could usually get the job done, just like a handsaw would get the job of carving a turkey done. But a curved conical tip would certainly be a much better tool for it. Knowing the consistency of the heat output helps you know whether or not you'd have to worry about whether that particular iron is going to reliably do the job of soldering or de-soldering the component, or if it's going to cook the good components or scorch the board or damage the solder pads due to an unexpected spike in temp due to faulty power regulation. Knowing the quality & durability of the tips, plus the availability of them helps to know if replacement tips are readily available & ho frequently they might need replacing. Knowing the range of the heat output is also important to A, help ensure that you don't destroy what you're trying to repair by frying it, but also B, in knowing what solder options are available, such as whether it can sustain the heat needed for lead free solder, etc... For comparison, I saw a video of a gentleman doing a side by side comparison of 2 hot air stations. Both were identical, except for in 1 very important regard. The air pressure of 1 was helped along by a fan in the hand held unit itself, while the other used forced air pressure traveling down the hose from the unit's base station. This is an important key distinction in functionality, because while they both can get the job done of de-soldering surface mount components, one does the same job much faster, due to the differences in the heated air pressure delivery. From this, it can also be gleaned that if, for example, you were trying to re-ball a BGA chip with a stencil & solder paste, with one unit, you'd have little issue, while with the other, you're gonna have a bad time. Anyway, I wasn't trying to be mean or anything, even though I was a bit snarky, I'm just saying I think that these details & areas of focus that are more salient to actual use cases are likely of more important to most viewers than things like the weight of the base station. I mean, I can't speak for others, but regarding the weight, if the cheaper one fulfilled adequately all the other needs, ok, slap some velcro or solid double sided tape on it & the table & problem solved. Non issue. I mean, for example, Let's say I had a bricked laptop that doesn't boot anymore due to corrupted or broken BIOS right? & let's say I had an identical, dead donor motherboard that had good BIOS chips on it, & I wanted to replace the bad bios chips on the otherwise perfectly fine motherboard with the ones from the donor board, giving me a fully functional laptop again. I'm not going to care about whether or not I'd have to 3d print a holder for the solder tips to keep them neat & tidy, I'd care about if it has the right tips & the whole unit performs consistently & reliably enough for me to confidently do the job I need it to do with the highest possible rate of success & ease. does that make more sense?
@@demitriuspandi9736 That does make more sense. At the time I filmed this, I just filmed the differences that I thought were interesting. I had just upgraded my soldering station which is why I had the two. I was excited to show off my new toy and didn't really storyboard or think to long on this video. My old system did great for what I was using it for, the only complaint I had against it was the quality of the materials, especially the permanently affixed cable that kept getting tangled! Which is why I focused on the material quality. If I was to shoot this video again, (I cannot since I threw the old soldering station away) I would add a soldering section where I compare the advertised tip temp to the actual. And how well it held the temp while soldering different scenarios. As well as have gone into more depth about tip quality. Maybe when I upgrade my Weller and do the comparison then :) Though, you have inspired me to think about making a "what to look for in a soldering station" video, using your points. And of course, I can appreciate a bit of "snark" It keeps the comments section interesting. Thank you for the feedback!
@@IllInformedHuman ok now I understand but we can’t compare then without actually soldering, as we need to check how they perform and what type of soldering they can handle, and other things like what tips are available and price of tips. Also quality etc, I can tell you though there both rubbish, weller is way overpriced and both use old technology
@@M.E63 I understand what you are saying, but disagree. Even the $5 plug in - non adjustable soldering pencils will melt solder and properly solder a component. The fluctuation in the heat could be an issue. Or the temp could be too high. As I didn't have a way to measure the accuracy of the hot end I thought it useless to show it just melting solder. As for Weller, at least they use high quality materials than the cheapies!
Thank you! So far I just have a hand-held simple model, nice to see what may come next! :)
When you upgrade, the stand alone pencil solder iron can still be used to mend 3D parts (PLA) or burn patterns into wood!
So aside from a bunch of creature comforts & relatively irrelevant details, (as what most people care about is how well & reliably does it do the job you need it to do, all the rest is stuff that people adjust to without really thinking about it), there is no difference & they do the same job perfectly fine? In, which case the cheaper one is better to go with? Because if not, then the ACTUAL IMPORTANT info, like actually USING the device & whether they can do the same job to the same quality MIGHT be a more relevant & important thing to focus on, & SHOULD have been in the video.
By the way, Flux. Not tinning material, Solder & flux.
If you keep tools longer than a few years, those "creature comforts" make a HUGE difference. The most expensive option will stand the test of time IMO. But sure, you could get by with a cheapie. Watching both devices melt solder would have done nothing to show the differences in the products as they both heat up to the temperature needed to do that task. I don't know what you expected to gleam from seeing that happen...
As the professionals know, most pots of tinning material are made of molten tin, with a zinc chloride flux. Simply calling it flux is inaccurate.
And I hope you took your heart medication after watching this video as it appears to have stressed you out! If my review was that horrid, I would suggest filming your own conclusions. Thanks for watching non-the-less.
@@IllInformedHuman Regarding the tinning material vs solder & flux matter, I mean, we could go back & forth on that all day, but I'll admit, I was being a bit overly pedantic on honestly trivial minutia, so fair enough. point taken.
Regarding the more salient criticism of the video though, I think you're missing the point of what I'm getting at, & in all fairness, perhaps I could have done a better job at communicating it. When I'm referring to things like creature comforts, for example, I mean things like how well the wire sheathing holds up to potential burns. I mean, sure, more durability is nice to have, but it's fairly inconsequential, especially if your using proper cable management practice to minimize excess slack of the cable, as doing so not only keeps the cable clear of the tip of the iron, but also minimizes the risk of things like bumping, unexpected wiggling or accidentally stepping on or otherwise disturbing the cable could cause the iron to jerk or wiggle in your hand, which you don't want in such precision work.
What I mean by more valuable data is things like the tips themselves, for example. I mean you said the 2 had similar tips, but weren't exchangeable & that the cheaper one didn't come with a tip holder, while the Weller did. Again, nice to have creature comforts, but doesn't really give insight to the more work centric use cases. What is the availability of tips? What's the variety of tips? How well do they hold up under use before they start breaking down? How accurate is the actual temp vs the reported temp? How granular is the temp control? How consistent is the temp? how high & how low can it go? These are more use case specific details that I think are more salient because, I mean if you're just tinning & soldering together splices of decent gauge wire, heck, any soldering iron would do the trick, but if say for example, you're doing component level work on electronics, there's a lot more to account for. In that same regard, when working with surface mount components, sure a flat chisel tip could usually get the job done, just like a handsaw would get the job of carving a turkey done. But a curved conical tip would certainly be a much better tool for it. Knowing the consistency of the heat output helps you know whether or not you'd have to worry about whether that particular iron is going to reliably do the job of soldering or de-soldering the component, or if it's going to cook the good components or scorch the board or damage the solder pads due to an unexpected spike in temp due to faulty power regulation. Knowing the quality & durability of the tips, plus the availability of them helps to know if replacement tips are readily available & ho frequently they might need replacing. Knowing the range of the heat output is also important to A, help ensure that you don't destroy what you're trying to repair by frying it, but also B, in knowing what solder options are available, such as whether it can sustain the heat needed for lead free solder, etc...
For comparison, I saw a video of a gentleman doing a side by side comparison of 2 hot air stations. Both were identical, except for in 1 very important regard. The air pressure of 1 was helped along by a fan in the hand held unit itself, while the other used forced air pressure traveling down the hose from the unit's base station. This is an important key distinction in functionality, because while they both can get the job done of de-soldering surface mount components, one does the same job much faster, due to the differences in the heated air pressure delivery. From this, it can also be gleaned that if, for example, you were trying to re-ball a BGA chip with a stencil & solder paste, with one unit, you'd have little issue, while with the other, you're gonna have a bad time.
Anyway, I wasn't trying to be mean or anything, even though I was a bit snarky, I'm just saying I think that these details & areas of focus that are more salient to actual use cases are likely of more important to most viewers than things like the weight of the base station. I mean, I can't speak for others, but regarding the weight, if the cheaper one fulfilled adequately all the other needs, ok, slap some velcro or solid double sided tape on it & the table & problem solved. Non issue.
I mean, for example, Let's say I had a bricked laptop that doesn't boot anymore due to corrupted or broken BIOS right? & let's say I had an identical, dead donor motherboard that had good BIOS chips on it, & I wanted to replace the bad bios chips on the otherwise perfectly fine motherboard with the ones from the donor board, giving me a fully functional laptop again. I'm not going to care about whether or not I'd have to 3d print a holder for the solder tips to keep them neat & tidy, I'd care about if it has the right tips & the whole unit performs consistently & reliably enough for me to confidently do the job I need it to do with the highest possible rate of success & ease. does that make more sense?
@@demitriuspandi9736 That does make more sense. At the time I filmed this, I just filmed the differences that I thought were interesting. I had just upgraded my soldering station which is why I had the two. I was excited to show off my new toy and didn't really storyboard or think to long on this video. My old system did great for what I was using it for, the only complaint I had against it was the quality of the materials, especially the permanently affixed cable that kept getting tangled! Which is why I focused on the material quality.
If I was to shoot this video again, (I cannot since I threw the old soldering station away) I would add a soldering section where I compare the advertised tip temp to the actual. And how well it held the temp while soldering different scenarios. As well as have gone into more depth about tip quality. Maybe when I upgrade my Weller and do the comparison then :)
Though, you have inspired me to think about making a "what to look for in a soldering station" video, using your points.
And of course, I can appreciate a bit of "snark" It keeps the comments section interesting.
Thank you for the feedback!
how can you compare 2 soldering stations without fucking soldering anything???
Are you blind? I just showed you how to do that in the video? Watch it again if you missed it...
@@IllInformedHumanI didn’t see any soldering of any components or anything to be honest
@@M.E63 I meant that I was able to compare 2 soldering stations without actually soldering ☺
@@IllInformedHuman ok now I understand but we can’t compare then without actually soldering, as we need to check how they perform and what type of soldering they can handle, and other things like what tips are available and price of tips. Also quality etc, I can tell you though there both rubbish, weller is way overpriced and both use old technology
@@M.E63 I understand what you are saying, but disagree. Even the $5 plug in - non adjustable soldering pencils will melt solder and properly solder a component. The fluctuation in the heat could be an issue. Or the temp could be too high.
As I didn't have a way to measure the accuracy of the hot end I thought it useless to show it just melting solder.
As for Weller, at least they use high quality materials than the cheapies!