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ColdHeat - anyone use it?

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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:

--- Quote from: Ken Layton on November 19, 2004, 11:28:42 am ---The commercials show people soldering with it, but how does it work when you're DESOLDERING?

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: 1UP on November 19, 2004, 06:34:55 pm ---From the manual:

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

--- End quote ---

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.


--- Quote ---"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."

--- End quote ---

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.


--- Quote ---
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.

--- End quote ---

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?


--- Quote ---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.

--- End quote ---

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.


--- Quote ---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.

--- End quote ---

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.

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