Solder Pot Advice


Hello everyone,
I am planning to purchase a solder pot, and would appreciate any advice as to brands, models, mandatory temperature ranges, etc. and what features to look for or avoid. I will be using it for removing insulation and tinning wires. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Regards,
Dennis
dgclark0007

Showing 2 responses by kirkus

Solder pots are messy, fumey things -- they take a while to get up to full temperature, and take a big chunk of solder to get them going. Unless you have to tin a hundred wires or something, I wouldn't bother For small-quantity work, a broad tip on a good temperature-controlled iron is at least as good, and it's easier to keep from melting dielectrics (and burning your fingers!)

If you do go the solder pot route, make sure that your work area is very adequately ventillated.
I've actually had excellent results with litz wire (including Cardas) simply by cranking my soldering station to a little over 800F, and giving them a good tinning. I then turn it back down to the usual 700F for actual soldering.

But if you need more heat capacity for i.e. bigger litz speaker wires, you can use a big stained-glass style soldering iron for the tinning - they're cheap and should idle at about 800-850F. These things also work well for soldering to the chassis (i.e. Fender guitar amp ground connections) - it's actually the tool that was used in production for this purpose.