ColdHeat - anyone use it?

[pgifford]

Hi,

  I saw a commercial for ColdHeat today (http://www.coldheat.com) and found it intriguing.  Has anyone used it?  Their faq says it's not to be used on sensitive components.  I'm not sure what that means.  No board repairs?

  Anyway, for $20 at ThinkGeek it seems like a great deal.

Paul

[JAMMA Guy]

My guess is because it's not ground .... static buildup could damage a PCB.

I got one ordered (seemed to cool of a tool not to have one).

Can't wait to try it out  

[pgifford]

My guess is because it's not ground .... static buildup could damage a PCB.

I got one ordered (seemed to cool of a tool not to have one).

Can't wait to try it out  

Please post a review after you have a chance to play with it.  Be sure to try it out on some boards and let us know how they hold up

Paul

[MasTequila]

I have one and I must say it is a handy tool.  However I have not used it on a PCB yet so I cannot give any info about that.  Howver for 20 bucks I think it is a very good buy.

[dtu]

I'd be more worried about the temperature (too hot) than not being grounded. You could easily 'cook' sensitive components, without any sort of temperature control on your Soldering Iron.

[Industen]

I've used this product on many boards and it works great. The most frequently would be MOD chips on a PS2 and simple PS2 controller soldering. It saves so much time rather then fumbling around with a normal iron. Do it quickly though because it does get rather hot. It even came with an amazing wire stripper that IMO is worth $20 by itself and a handy infomercial carrying case  .



https://www.asseenontvnetwork.com/vcc/coldheat/coldheat/115261/

[pgifford]

I've used this product on many boards and it works great...
https://www.asseenontvnetwork.com/vcc/coldheat/coldheat/115261/

Is that an affiliate link, where you get paid if I buy?


Paul

[Industen]

No. I just wasen't sure if the stripper was included with the original link. The webpage on TV was

ColdHeatTools.com It just redirects to that other one.

[pgifford]

Thanks for the tip.  What guy doesn't appreciate a good stripper?

Paul

[AlexSledge]

Looks like it's just an advanced peltier cooler (used in reverse), using highly thermal conductive material (i.e. the Athalite), so that the temperature normalizes quickly after you're done. Also, 800 degrees was mentioned, which can be too hot for some components (I keep my solder station closer to 300), so damage may occur that way in addition to any possible static discharge.

[abrannan]

I've used this product on many boards and it works great. The most frequently would be MOD chips on a PS2 and simple PS2 controller soldering. It saves so much time rather then fumbling around with a normal iron. Do it quickly though because it does get rather hot. It even came with an amazing wire stripper that IMO is worth $20 by itself and a handy infomercial carrying case  .



https://www.asseenontvnetwork.com/vcc/coldheat/coldheat/115261/

The only thing is that stripper isn't good on very thin guage wire.  But for the 18-22 ga that you're most likely to use, it's WONDERFUL.

[JackTucky]

My general rule is, anything advertised on TV with that announcers voice, or, if I have to call in the next 10 minutes, will NOT WORK.

But, you guys give it the thumbs up, so, I ordered one.

Now if my white paste that removes everything, my portable battery sewing machine, my quick defroster, and  my natural bra   all worked, that would be awesome.

Art

/edit  How much was shipping?

[Industen]

I think it was around $6 but with the wire stripper you really have to pay $4 for shipping so it's around $10. They offer you 2 other tips during checkout too...I didn't get them...god knows what that would have boosted the shipping up to.

[ErikRuud]

It is not a peltier junction.

Read the FAQ, they are running a current through the solder itself to generate heat. That is why the tips are split.

8. What is the spark I see sometimes during soldering?
The spark (arc) is caused electrical current passes from one half of the tip to the other. Although the tool's spark should not damage any electrical or electronic components, we recommend caution when soldering sensitive components. Also, ensure that the tool is not used in flammable or explosive environments, such such as near gas or gasoline fumes.

[abrannan]

I think it was around $6 but with the wire stripper you really have to pay $4 for shipping so it's around $10. They offer you 2 other tips during checkout too...I didn't get them...god knows what that would have boosted the shipping up to.

I just ordered mine, skipped the wire stripper (I already have 2 of them), but I did get the tips.  Total was $41.90.

[1UP]

Just got one today!  (About time, it's been on a 3 month backorder   )

I tried it out, and it does exactly as advertized.  Turn it on, a super bright LED lights up the work area.  The tool remains cool until you touch the split tip to the work piece and complete the electrical circuit (a red LED on the top of the unit indicates when contact is made and tip is hot).  Solder melts INSTANTLY!  A couple seconds later, both joint and tool are indeed cool to the touch.

The tool makes very clean joints, very quickly, and it is very easy to control the flow of solder with.  For small PCB pads, the space inbetween the two halves of the tip can actually be used to prevent solder from spilling onto nearby connections.  It works extremely well with small diameter tin solder.  I have burned many cords, carpets and fingers with regular irons in the past.  Considering soldering irons have been virtually unchanged since I was a kid, it's about time someone came up with a way to do it better.  It does seem archaic to still be using wall current to heat up a 6 inch metal rod to the melting point of tin, when all you're really using is the tip.  

The tip of the Cold Heat unit does indeed spark when you are working, but it is still only a 6v current (measured with a voltmeter) and the spark is not the loud, powerful type of spark you get when touching a doorknob on a bad hair day.  According to their docs, the spark should not cause any damage unless you allow the two halves of the tip to touch opposite leads on a sensitive component.  They do not recommend it for use with very small components, which I take to mean tiny surface-mount components and the like.

The heat also dissipates very quickly on the workpiece.  As I said, the solder melts almost instantly when you apply it to the joint, and once the joint is made, it is cool to the touch within seconds.  With a high peak temperature of 800 degrees, you do need to work fast, but then, half a second is all it takes to make a joint anyway.  If you are melting components with ANY type of iron, you are not doing it right to begin with.

The tip appears to be graphite or something similar.  (It will actually mark on paper.)  The manual does warn against using excess pressure, which may break the tip, but again, if you are pressing that hard, you need to go back to soldering 101.  It really only requires a light touch to get a good joint, no matter what kind of soldering iron you use.

Definitely the best features of this thing are convenience related.  Not having a cord is its biggest asset, which instantly makes it much safer than a regular iron.  Pulling the cord accidentally is the most common cause for damage to nearby objects and body parts.  Plus, it cools off instantly so it's pretty much impossible to melt anything inadvertently anyway.  This also means that the iron is not constantly giving off toxic fumes while it's sitting on the stand.     It is very light weight and easy to handle.  The white LED on the nose makes work much easier.     And the tip does not require any tinning or other maintenance.  

It's not made for heavy jobs like plumbing repair, but it seems to be great at what it does.  All in all, a very sweet gadget!  If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.  

[shafor]

I picked mine up at Home Depot.  Works like a champ!

[Witchboard]

I didn't know they were at home depot.  I'll have to drop by and check it out.  May end up cancelling my online order.

[johnnysmitch]

I managed to break the tip on mine   when I was cleaning some flux out from in between the halves of the split tip... be careful, as the replacement tips cost half as much as the unit itself.

[quarterback]

Does the included-tip work well for Mame-type-work (small pcb's) or would you all recommend one of the other tips?

[Ken Layton]

Proprietary tips that break easily/prematurely and are costly to replace. Temperature too hot for small parts. Hmmm. This isn't good. The commercials show people soldering with it, but how does it work when you're DESOLDERING?

In my opinion I'd pass this unit by and get a real soldering iron.

[ChadTower]

I'm just starting to get into soldering (done a couple simple Saturn mods), and will pick one of these up today.

[nipsmg]

 If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.  

I'm wondering if I'm the only one who got the Ferris Bueller's Day Off reference...  


I want one of these.  

[RandyT]

In my opinion I'd pass this unit by and get a real soldering iron.

I'll second this sentiment.

I have heard that they specifically state that it is not recommended for working on "sensitive electronics".  I believe the reason for this is that they are introducing a strong current beyween the 2 halves of the tip, and anything that touches both halves gets very hot, very quickly.  If you have ever accidentally crossed the terminals on a battery with a thin piece of metal and watched it glow and vaporize, you'd understand the principle this item is most likely based on (and DON'T try that at home!!)  Now, if this is the case, think about what would happen when one side of the tip is in contact with one leg/pin of a component and the other side comes into contact with the a different leg/pin accidentally.  That right, a circuit is completed and I would expect that you could pretty much kiss the component goodbye.

In other words, soldering jewelry, wires to switches (while not connected to the electronics),  and things like that, it'll probably work fine.  But my opinion is that the cautions included with the unit should be heeded and you should avoid using it on any electronics you find dear.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

RandyT

[Stormy151]

Wow, thanks for the reviews guys.  I was skeptical of this product, but now I think I'm going to pick one up.

[Granger]

after reading they are available at home depot, i ran right out and got one, have been running aroud the house soldering random metal obects together and it seems to work great, don't think my wife will be too happy about my testing though.

[DrewKaree]

after reading they are available at home depot, i ran right out and got one, have been running aroud the house soldering random metal obects together

I have this picture in my head of you with paint all over your face, tie around your head like a headdress, in yer skivvies...grunting and going OO OO OO whenver you find something metal to solder!

And yes, they definitely ARE at Home Depot - as always, find the oldest guy there who doesn't seem to need a helmet when leaving the house, and ask him where it is.  ~20 bucks if memory serves.

[missioncontrol]

I just saw them today in Home Depot and after reading these reviews I may just pick one up on Monday

[Witchboard]

I picked one up on the way home.  Funny how Home Depot has a huge display of them, but everybody that offers them online are out of stock.  Guess that's why.  

[shmokes]

Costco carries them as well.  Branded as Coleman (yeah...the camping people).

Here's a picture of the Coleman one.

[1UP]

From the manual:

"The tool it intended for hobby and light professional use in electrical projects with small and medium sized components, such as 18-24 AWG wires, small jewelry repairs, and larger printed circuit boards and components.  We do not recommend it for soldering temperature-sensitive or very small electronic components."

"When soldering electronic components with small pin-out, do not bridge two or more different pins with the opposite halves of the split-tip.  Doing so will cause a current discharge into the part and may damage it."

From this, I would have to say, don't use it to solder the microchips in your wristwatch, but it should be safe for doing gamepad hacks, or soldering resistors, capacitors, and power transistors.  This is about 99% of the soldering you do in this hobby.

If you are repairing that rare original arcade board you payed big bucks for on ebay, maybe play it safe and use a regular soldering pencil.  But they do show people soldering on pretty small PCBs several times in the commercial, impyling that it is safe in most cases.

If the board is not connected to a ground or power supply (thus preventing the current from flowing beyond the tool tip), and you are careful enough to not touch the tip to multiple pins of a chip at a time (which is bad news even with a regular iron), and you are skilled enough to make a joint without heating the PCB until it starts to smoke, I fail to see why this tool is such a hazard.

I got the conical tip for mine, since I do a lot of pretty small stuff.  The wedge tip that comes standard wouldn't work too well with very small connections.  If you need to clean solder from the tip, I would use a folded piece of paper or a cut-out piece of card to push it out.  If it doesn't budge, try heating the tip momentarily, then push the debris out while it's still hot.  I really wouldn't recommend using a screwdriver or anything hard enough to break the tip.

Just my opinion, but I think this thing is pretty useful for your average project.

[Witchboard]

The commercials show people soldering with it, but how does it work when you're DESOLDERING?

I'll still probably use my desoldering iron, but the manual does say that the tip can be used with wick.

[1UP]

I have used it with wick.  I can't tell any difference from using it with a regular soldering iron, except that it's way faster with the cold heat.

[RandyT]

From the manual:

"We do not recommend it for soldering temperature-sensitive or very small electronic
components.""

All electronics are "temperature sensitive".  Heat is one of the primary causes of electronic failure.  "Very small" is a relative term and means little by itself.  In other words, it's a  disclaimer that is vague enough to cover just about any circumstance where an individual might attempt to blame the product for any damage.

"When soldering electronic components with small pin-out, do not bridge two or more different pins with the opposite halves of the split-tip.  Doing so will cause a current discharge into the part and may damage it."

How about will damage it.  Any current strong enough to instantly heat a pad up to 800 degrees F will vaporize the tiny traces in a CPU.  If you are talking about 5watt ceramic resistor, that will probably be fine.  But you won't find those in  this hobby.

From this, I would have to say, don't use it to solder the microchips in your wristwatch, but it should be safe for doing gamepad hacks, or soldering resistors, capacitors, and power transistors.  This is about 99% of the soldering you do in this hobby.

Add "don't try to use it on your KeyWiz Eco or a Keyboard hack".  And I'd seriously think twice about the gamepad hack considering how close together some of the nested fingers are on those contacts.  How many percent does this represent?

If you are repairing that rare original arcade board you payed big bucks for on ebay, maybe play it safe and use a regular soldering pencil.  But they do show people soldering on pretty small PCBs several times in the commercial, impyling that it is safe in most cases.

The pictures on the web site show a very sparsely populated proto board, not a production PCB.  If you have a .250" between leads, go for it.  Otherwise, you are taking a risk using something like this.

*edit start*

Looked at another site.  They show someone jamming the giant tip into the middle of a bunch of surface mount components on what appears to be a PC video card. <shudder>

*edit end*


As for the commercials, well, the Crazy glue guy hung from a girder by a hard hat in the 70's, but I can't say I was silly enough to try that one myself.

If the board is not connected to a ground or power supply (thus preventing the current from flowing beyond the tool tip), and you are careful enough to not touch the tip to multiple pins of a chip at a time (which is bad news even with a regular iron), and you are skilled enough to make a joint without heating the PCB until it starts to smoke, I fail to see why this tool is such a hazard.

Merely touching multiple leads at the same time with a normal iron is not "bad news."  In fact, it does nothing other than transfer heat to the pins.  Doing so with this thing can be catastrophic.  You also have no control over the temperature with the unit you are talking about, whereas a temperature controlled soldering iron will never cause the components to get hotter than the setting of the iron.  And if this thing goes to 800 degrees F as a max temperature and the only means of controlling the heat is trying to judge how fast it's going to reach the max temp based on the size of the metal you are heating, well that equates to virtually no control and that could be bad.

As always, using the right tool for any job will usually have a beneficial effect on the outcome.  My opinion is that this tool has a number of useful purposes, but using it on anything with a microprocessor is just asking for trouble.


RandyT

[Ken Layton]

My observations:
Seems more like this so-called soldering iron is marketed more toward newbies/amateurs who don't know how to solder properly or who do little soldering.

I would never use this 'tool'. There's just no substitute for a proper soldering iron and technique.

[shmokes]

I agree with Randy and Ken.  With that said, it does seem like it would be pretty handy for the newbie as well as the professional who is working on something that is not sensitive.  It clearly brings something to the table in terms of safety and the lack of a cord is convenient.

The right tool for the job is what it comes down to.  For many jobs this soldering iron is probably not appropriate.  But for a job that does not require much finess it doesn't make sense to pull out the soldering station if you've got this thing handy and it'll do the job.

...and so on.

[1UP]

How about will damage it.  Any current strong enough to instantly heat a pad up to 800 degrees F will vaporize the tiny traces in a CPU.  If you are talking about 5watt ceramic resistor, that will probably be fine.  But you won't find those in  this hobby.

How many people are soldering CPUs on this board?  Like I said, for something like that, you might want to use a soldering pencil, since that requires a much finer tip than what's available for the cold heat anyway.  Actually, for something like that, you'd need surface mount equipment anyway, not a soldering pencil.

Also, My experience with this thing is that the heat is very localized.  I don't know why, but I do know that I can solder on wires that I am holding with my bare hands, without getting burned like I would with my regular iron.  Also, it dissipates very quickly from the joint compared to using a regular iron.  If heat is a problem, you can always use a clip-on heatsink.

Merely touching multiple leads at the same time with a normal iron is not "bad news."

If it's hot, it can easily melt the solder on the leads together.  I'm very careful with my soldering, but I've had times when I was dealing with pretty tight PCBs where pins of a chip were soldered together, or a surface mount component came off the board because of the proximity to what I was soldering.  That's a situation where I probably wouldn't use the cold heat anyway, but you can still have trouble with a regular iron too.

[Gunstar Hero]

Seems neat, but I'll stick with the old standby.  

[1UP]

The right tool for the job is what it comes down to.  For many jobs this soldering iron is probably not appropriate.  But for a job that does not require much finess it doesn't make sense to pull out the soldering station if you've got this thing handy and it'll do the job.

Exactly.  It's great to have a socket set, but sometimes a crescent wrench comes in mighty handy.

Look, I'm not trying to force everyone to buy this thing.  I'm not a shareholder in the company.  I just think it works pretty well for its intended purpose.  I just don't understand why it' s being dismissed as being not only useless, but dangerous, no matter what kind of soldering you're doing.  I think the fact that they keep selling out is a testament to the fact that it's not just a piece of junk.

If it sounds good, get one.  I got mine and I don't regret it.

[RandyT]

How about will damage it.  Any current strong enough to instantly heat a pad up to 800 degrees F will vaporize the tiny traces in a CPU.  If you are talking about 5watt ceramic resistor, that will probably be fine.  But you won't find those in  this hobby.

How many people are soldering CPUs on this board?  Like I said, for something like that, you might want to use a soldering pencil, since that requires a much finer tip than what's available for the cold heat anyway.  Actually, for something like that, you'd need surface mount equipment anyway, not a soldering pencil.

You don't have to be directly soldering on a CPU for the current to destroy it.  The pads for the input connections on the Eco 2 are .100" apart, both vertically and horizontally.  These are connected directly to the CPU (which, BTW, we solder to the board with a grounded pencil soldering iron, albeit a high-end one)  Given the theory of operation the tool is built on,  I'd speculate that touching two of those pads together, one on each side of your "iron's" tip will, at minimum blow through the protection diodes inside the processor and kill those two inputs.  It could even kill the entire chip if you happen to hit the right combination.

Merely touching multiple leads at the same time with a normal iron is not "bad news."

If it's hot, it can easily melt the solder on the leads together.  I'm very careful with my soldering, but I've had times when I was dealing with pretty tight PCBs where pins of a chip were soldered together, or a surface mount component came off the board because of the proximity to what I was soldering.  That's a situation where I probably wouldn't use the cold heat anyway, but you can still have trouble with a regular iron too.

This is a given, but that's not merely touching adjacent leads.  In one case you have a mess that can be cleaned up with a little solder wick, and you might even be able to re-attach the surface-mount component , with a little patience.  In the other case, you would have lost the project, or crippled it permanently.  I'd prefer the first scenario.

When I see a picture of one of these aimed at the center of a group of surface mount components as part of their marketing materials, I'd have to say that, based on my experience, the "intended purpose" is over stated.  

Also, there are lots of reasons for an item being "unavailable", not the least of them being limited production capability and the need to get available stock to the store chains where they will get the most exposure.  I have seen these branded with both the RadioShack and Coleman names and can fully understand  the value seen by both of these companies.  If you are camping and a wire breaks on your flashlight or other camping gear, it'd come in handy.  Just as it would when repairing a connection to an antenna on your roof.  But that doesn't imply suitability for other things.

I have a bit of a vested interest in this discussion from a customer service standpoint and I strongly discourage anyone from using this device on our encoder products.  There will probably even be an addition to the FAQ about this one.

RandyT

[shmokes]

Man, this thing is really keeping you up at night, isn't it Randy  

[RandyT]

Man, this thing is really keeping you up at night, isn't it Randy  

No.  Not yet anyway......but I do care enough about this one to try to help prevent someone from possibly nuking something they may have had to save up for.

I guess it's due to me growing up poor and watching items I didn't have the means to replace go up in smoke due to questionable advice.  (I think I hear violin music...oops, never mind.  It's just the "voices")  

RandyT