cacole It was me. I have one that is going on 15 years old now and I still haven't had to replace a tip.
It was me. I have one that is going on 15 years old now and I still haven't had to replace a tip.
Well, thanks. I love this thing. Now I need to find more things to build.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Was it Crandell?
This has got to be the best $49 I've spent on a tool in a long time. I built a LocoIO board tonight (can't test it, no DCC yet, and no Locobuffer either - I have the board and parts for that too) and this thing is a dream. I can;t see spending $100+ to get the Weller name, this thing works great. Since it's temperature controlled, the tip didn't just keep getting hotter and hotter while it was sitting on the stand, so it didn't bake any parts, and didn't sit there smoking. The tip didn't discolor from overheating. Granted it's one PC board I assembled, but the tip looks the same as it did when I took it out of the box. Heats up really fast too, much faster than my old standby 25 watt Radio Shack iron I used for electronics work. This should work well when I get some Fasttracks turnout jigs, too. And like anything else - it's not going to do EVERYTHING. At 45 watts it won't solder #12 bus wire, but that's what a 150 watt soldering gun is for.
Quick turnaround from the supplier - Howard Electronics. They aren't big on sending out a dozen emails with each stage of the order fulfillment process, but considering I placed the order on Thanksgiving day (and it appears they were closed on Friday as well), I got it in essentially a week - and 4 days of that was UPS ground shipment.