Product Test Report-Cold Heat Soldering Iron

Jeff Wisnia · 2005-11-16T00:08:48+00:00

As I suspected, you can't get enough watts out of 4 AA alkaline cells to solder anything much heavier than a small printed circuit pad.A friend's wife gave him one of those "Cold Heat" soldering irons as a birthday present last Sunday and we tried it out at his party.With 4 fresh alkalines installed it couldn't tin the stripped end of a piece of No. 18 stranded wire copper wire.Not a very practical tool for anything but very specialized lightweight work. Looking at some typical battery curves I'd estimate that it probably doesn't put out more than about 6 watts on fresh batteries.The tip, about 3/16" diameter and cut on the bias, was made up out of two nearly half round pieces of what looked like carbon separated by an insulator which stopped short of the end.It also was difficult to keep both sides of the tip in contact with the workpiece, which of course is needed to get any heat at all.On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give it about 0.5.Jeff

Nov 16, 2005 23 Replies

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Martin H. Eastburn 20 years ago

The problem - heat and copper - solder joins with the copper and it dissolves the tip. If you nickel plate or silver solder the tip then tin it with the solder - it will last and last.

On large irons - the trick is to use boot heal (tennis shoe (an old one maybe) ) presses all around the tip that solder should not flow to - and only the area that gets tinned is left free. The rubber taints the copper and solder won't tin it.

Naturally it can be done in reverse - hot rubber on the work to keep out the solder.

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Gerald Miller wrote:

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Leon Fisk 20 years ago

Hi Gerry,

I still have two of the old Wen's (one was my Dad's) and a handful of new tips. The tips rarely need to be replaced, in my experience that is. The only reason I bought the Weller was so I could have one sitting at the work bench and the Wen could stay in my service van. I grew tired of going out to the van and retrieving it when I needed some serious heat that my pencil irons couldn't deliver. The Wen stayed in the van because it would always work, the more dependable of the two.

I can shoot some images of the Wen if you're curious what it looked like. I suspect it is different than the one you had...

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Gerald Miller 20 years ago

The Wen belonged to the shop owner. My original Weller Junior (8100) is still in service after 50+ years. In the meantime I keep buying

8200's at yard sales for a couple bucks and giving them away, also have a D550 that I inherited from a friend. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

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J. Clarke 20 years ago

Personally I give it about an 8. It was made for that specialized light weight work you mention and that it does superbly well. I can't fault it for not doing other stuff that it wasn't designed to do.

Wattage doesn't really apply--it's a resistance soldering machine, so its output depends on the geometry and fit of the joint.

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