Soldering irons: made in America but designed in Russia?

Same troll. Must be bored...

If you buy cheap, you get cheap.

Get a Metcal. No screw at all.

Mini. Citroën. Vauxhall. Volvo. Rolls. Porsche. Fiat.

John

Hello Rich, I'm the OP. I'm sorry to hear you think I'm a troll.

I don't know what you mean by "same" becuase I have only posted here recently and I hope there isn't another post which could be misconstrued as a troll.

Perhaps you just don't like my point of view?

Yup, you're right! Which is why I wrote: "you can see crap-looking design in western Europe too ..... but there's a lot less of it than in the US".

One distinctive feature of US car design is a look I call: "I've just rammed a wall"

Mercifully, it is almost never found on west European cars and hopefully never will be. It is illustrated below.

There are probably 200 US cars with this sort of styling:

every US car that looks like this: that one is still very angular.

You are wrong. Despite the recession, Chrysler has sold considerably more than 200 of that model.

I don't know which brands you're referring to, but I've owned EDSYN (Engineering Dedicated To Suit Your Needs!) irons for 20+ years, and they don't look anything like that.

I should h "There are probably 200 US cars with this sort of styling [Chrysler

300] for every US car that looks like this [Chrysler ME] and that one is still very angular."

Of course that Chrysler ME 4-12 is a concept car and not for sale.

... and wherever in the world I happened to be, there were always those Weller stations. Antex? Never seen it, never heard of it. Strange, ain't it?

This is not a concept car and you can actually buy one for a reasonable price. I lately had the pleasure and that thing sure corners well. Best of all, on the freeway it doesn't use more gas than a compact passenger car:

Same here:

EDSYN are lovely irons but none of them list for under $100 and I believe they all have temperature regulation.

Apologies if I wasn't clear but EDSYN wasn't what I had in mind when I said "An ordinary soldering iron in the US with unregulated temperature". I mean the cheaper end of the market but not as cheap the rock-bottom $5 irons!

Ahm, what? See below.

Tell me, where's that ugly side-screw on this one?

Regarding your comment above, last time I checked $54.86 was still less than $100 ...

Oh, and no temperature regulation :-)

Lol, idiot yank doesn't realise that "Made in the USA" really means assembled in the USA by illegal immigrant workers.

Welcome to the third work, Yank.

Didn't you hear? A lot of them are out of work and driving overloaded old pieces of junk back to mexico, loaded down with everything they can haul.

You should talk. You Aussies bred and raised Phil Allison.

IFYPFY, idiot.

How about the Weller irons like the SP23? I have owned one or more at a time from the early '70s. The tip is threaded into the heating element and it retails for under $20. I bought a new one last year after the threads finally corroded out of the element after 35 years of use. I only use the non regulated irons to make cables, or for antique electronics. For modern ESD sensitive equipment I used the Edsyn Loner series and had three irons on my bench, one with a .015" tip in a reducing collet.

I also have the 175 watt version that does use a set screw to hold the tip.

25 watt:

175 watt:

OK

geoff

Good point Joerg. I missed that one in the online catalogue.

You may be misunderstanding me if you think I said ALL basic American soldering irons look Russian. I meant to say there was a lot more of this sort of poor design in the US than in western Europe. A single item doesn't really prove or disprove it.

However. as you kindly drew my attention to EDSYN then I show illustrate the Antexes I mentioned.

Consumer goods are cheaper in the US, so the usual $1 = £1 is probably a good indicator of the sort of price level these irons are at. It's the sub $20 market (including tax).

The Corvette and Viper are lovely cars. They're not exactly typical of American design.

That's what I meant when I said there are probably 200 cars which have that "hit a brick wall" look for every one which looks sleek and smooth.

They are as American as it gets ;-)

Well, I am not a great fan of US passenger cars. Not because of the looks (where I could care less because that doesn't matter to me as a buyer) but because of reliability. US trucks, however, are real work horses and they don't really have any EU equivalent. AFAIK only two foreign companies, Toyota and Nissan, make such trucks.

Then, the little Jeep looks quite cool.