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Or, how I learned to love the ohm.
Ohm, .. ohm. get it? its an electrical joke.. see.. never mind.
Yes folks, you too can make your own Cold Heat soldering iron!
Why spend $19.95 of your own hard earned money when you can make your own from the junk you have laying around. As a bonus, the unit you make will most likely be far more powerful than the commercially produced toy and much cheaper to maintain.
I have always been a "why buy it when you could build it" kind of person. I had seen the ads for the Cold Heat product for some time, but never really considered getting one until someone started asking about Christmas gifts (Thanks Matt). I looked up some reviews, and became fascinated in the "how".
We are playing with electricity and heat here. Please take all necessary precautions and be careful. I won't take responsibility for the scorch marks on the cat. Again.
If you're not interested in the science behind all this and just want to get to the meat, skip to step 4.
**NOTE** Many people have had ideas and recommendations (go figure). I'm going to treat this as an open project. I'll be positing improvements and failures at the end or the instructable. Check frame 10 for further developments. Now, back to the story..
Ohm, .. ohm. get it? its an electrical joke.. see.. never mind.
Yes folks, you too can make your own Cold Heat soldering iron!
Why spend $19.95 of your own hard earned money when you can make your own from the junk you have laying around. As a bonus, the unit you make will most likely be far more powerful than the commercially produced toy and much cheaper to maintain.
I have always been a "why buy it when you could build it" kind of person. I had seen the ads for the Cold Heat product for some time, but never really considered getting one until someone started asking about Christmas gifts (Thanks Matt). I looked up some reviews, and became fascinated in the "how".
We are playing with electricity and heat here. Please take all necessary precautions and be careful. I won't take responsibility for the scorch marks on the cat. Again.
If you're not interested in the science behind all this and just want to get to the meat, skip to step 4.
**NOTE** Many people have had ideas and recommendations (go figure). I'm going to treat this as an open project. I'll be positing improvements and failures at the end or the instructable. Check frame 10 for further developments. Now, back to the story..
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Traditional soldering irons use a heated metal tip to melt solder into electrical joints. This concept works great, but it can have some drawbacks. If the iron is too large or powerful, it can easily overheat the joint and destroy the board or components being soldered.
Its also somewhat dangerous to have a chunk of metal sitting around at a flaming 250-400+ degrees. People can burn themselves, and sometimes others, like that one time in my basement. And once in the garage. And maybe a few times in the attic. Not that anyone can prove anything.
The science behind the Cold Heat concept for soldering is not magic. Its not alien technology. Its not even that mysterious. The scientific principles behind the tool have been used in everything from light bulbs to space heaters to building cars. It's all about the resistance.
Viva la resistance!!
Its also somewhat dangerous to have a chunk of metal sitting around at a flaming 250-400+ degrees. People can burn themselves, and sometimes others, like that one time in my basement. And once in the garage. And maybe a few times in the attic. Not that anyone can prove anything.
The science behind the Cold Heat concept for soldering is not magic. Its not alien technology. Its not even that mysterious. The scientific principles behind the tool have been used in everything from light bulbs to space heaters to building cars. It's all about the resistance.
Viva la resistance!!
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http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-battery-powered-soldering-iron/
First YOu will need soldering gun.
1. Pencil lead from a standard No 2 wood pencil fits very nicely into female molex connector pins. Makes tip replacement a snap!
2. after taking apart a wood burner/soldering iron, I noticed that they had wrapped the copper coil around a thin tube of mica. you can use this for the insulation between your contacts.
You'll need a casing, 230 VAC male connector with a cable, a 230 to 5 volts transformer, 4 diodes (5V 4A) for a graetz-bridge, a Zener connecting the 5V circuit to the ground for your safety, and a - let's say - 4A fuse also for safety. I assume you know how to build a simple power supply out of this. Then you just connect the output of the circuit to the soldering iron through a switch, push-switch, potentiometer, goldfish, goulash, testicles, whatever you want. The power drawn from the network will approximately equal to power used for work, and no power loss on monitoring and control circuitry will be introduced.
what i did was:
split the two tips into two smaller parts so that i could solder small chip circuits.
it works well but burns the solder leaving it black and non-conductive, im using a Delta Electronics AC adapter for a printer with an output of 30v .83A(too lazy to find a proper adapter) am i using too much current or am i leaving it on there too long?
thanks for the great instructable and any feedback would be great!
Some welders use this method but I cannot remember which type?
You can even get soldering robots: http://www.mta.ch/pages/tbrasage_plateformes_tr300.asp
PCBPolice Electronics Forum - we need some users....please!
PCBPolice Electronics Forum - we need some users....please!
With mains voltages (which are inherently dangerous anyhow) you tend to have ELCBs set at around 15mA - this is considered (along with the 240VAC) to be a ~lethal amount apparently?
PCB Police