by Florida_Slotter » Fri Dec 07, 2012 10:20 am
I was asked the other day what the brand of my fancy soldering station was.
The reply I stated was "None".
My soldering is all done with an Inland Studio Professional 100 watt soldering iron. You can find them for about $35 on the web.
I DO NOT PLUG MY IRON DIRECTILY INTO A POWER OUTLET. The amount of heat generated like this is way too much for just about anything slot car related.
My heat control unit is comprised of parts that you can buy at Home Depot, Lowes, ACE Hardware or other such stores. It is a square metal outlet box, a duplex outlet, an extenion cord and a light dimmer switch. On the duplex outlet, I separated the outlets by cutting the buss bar on the side of the outlet. Then I wired one outlet diretly to the non-plug end of the extension cord and then tot he ligth dimmer switch. The output of the light dimmer switch is wired to the other outlet.
This provides me with an extension cord for when I go and compete in commercial type slot races, also a controllable outlet to select the hear output of my soldering iron. My iron normally is set about mid way on the heat control. But if I need more heat, such as when I'm soldering to a piece of .064 x 1.000 brass stock, I have that ability.
By controlling the amount of heat, the tip will last much longer then letting it run 'wide open". The tip on my soldering iron, which is coming up on 3 years old, looks as good as the day I received my Inland "Studio Professional" 100 watt soldering iron.
You can buy different tips for your Inland soldering iron, but I find the standard 5/16 tip that comes with it to by quite satisfactory for any applications that I have ever encountered from soldering on lead wires to building brass and wire chassis.
Just my opinion of course.