Because this could be interesting for a few of us... DIY Solder Station

[micromegas]

Dangerous Prototypes posted this today on Facebook:

http://www.martin-kumm.de/wiki/doku.php?id=Projects:SMD_Solderstation

It works with Weller RT on-the-fly-interchangeable Soldering Tips.

Here is the catalogue: http://www.apexhandtools.com/weller/documents/Weller_Soldering_Tips%20_Brochure.pdf

[muddyfox]

Nice. If I hadn't sprung for a nice JBC last xmas (well, the family did, really), I'd likely be all over this.

[derevaun]

Whoah, nice! It will work nicely in the "I could DIY that, so I didn't buy a commercial one, but haven't yet gotten close to building it" role.

[pickdropper]

It's an interesting (and pretty cool) idea, but the raw tips are about $35 each.  By the time you bought everything, you are probably in for about $75, which is pretty cheap for a good soldering station.  The only questions are how well it works and how reliable it is.

But you also don't need this for doing SMT work.  You can get a really fine point tip for a normal soldering station and it works fine.  My Weller station isn't cheap, but isn't not the RT series and it works for SMT just fine.

[alanp]

Granted, I have no idea what is inside a normal soldering station, but that's the most complicated soldering iron (and supporting circuitry) I've ever seen. A microprocessor'ed iron... what a world.

Also granted, I've found a bog standard 40W pencil iron has worked perfectly fine for me for pretty much everything...

[juansolo]

I de-coked the inside of the tip of the £15 soldering iron I use the other day. Working better than ever

[micromegas]

It's an interesting (and pretty cool) idea, but the raw tips are about $35 each.  By the time you bought everything, you are probably in for about $75, which is pretty cheap for a good soldering station.  The only questions are how well it works and how reliable it is.

But you also don't need this for doing SMT work.  You can get a really fine point tip for a normal soldering station and it works fine.  My Weller station isn't cheap, but isn't not the RT series and it works for SMT just fine.

This is what I use for SMT at home: http://www.ondaradio.es/Portals/0/img/productos/Prod_1135313.jpg and it works awesome .

At university we have 2 cool JBC stations with interchargeable tips... pure heaven, you don't have to wait for the tip to cool to change it (pretty usefull when you are adjusting matching networks on real time)