SEEED Mini Soldering Iron Discussions | Drop

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SEEED Mini Soldering Iron

Jul 30, 2015

I played with this to test it out so I can answer some questions about it.
First of all, I don't think this is wireless. That's some kind of mistranslation/miscommunication or I just haven't figured it out yet. Which means, good news, it works while it's plugged in. There's also a Micro USB port on the back that I'm incredibly curious about, but it's still a puzzle. Maybe a more universal form of power supply.
I used this to solder some switches on an Ergodox board I have laying around and it did very well. Once you turn the unit on it defaults to 300 Celsius and gets there in about 5 seconds. Once it's on you can use the two buttons to adjust the temp up and down from 100 to 400 Celsius and it adjusts the temp within a few seconds. When actually using it the solder melted and bonded quickly and I didn't notice any cold joints being formed. Using it on some older joints to test reflowing also worked well. The included tip was a good for switches and some of the larger components, but I would recommend getting the addon tips if you're going to do some finer work. When you're done the soldering iron cools back down to "safe to touch" in about a minute, though I've never really timed it.
On the downside, after about 30 minutes it gets pretty toasty in my hands. Not any kind of ouch ouch hot, but I imagine it would start to get uncomfortable after awhile. The box says after 40 minutes of 350 degree use it can get up to 50-60 degrees, so Arizona concrete in the summer hot. The only other thing was, while cooling down or in between work, I didn't know what to do with it. I ended up grabbing another soldering station's stand and carefully putting it in that, but an included stand or option for one would have been nice.
I didn't know before they handed me this that soldering irons this small existed, but I really liked it. It's about the size of a fountain pen and the digital display made it easy to adjust to where I wanted. If you plan on doing hours of soldering while sitting at a work bench, then this might not be the right fit, but for small projects or if my job involved travelling and electronics in some capacity this would be a great fit.

Jul 30, 2015