So what does it mean when your soldering iron goes blue?

[bwanasonic]

What ever happened to Weird Al anyhow?

Oops.

[Herr Masel]

Nnnnot necessarily... wrong answer....?

I try to avoid bluntly calling people wrong on this forum, especially when I'm not so sure about why I think they're wrong. Care to expand on your thoughts? I'm not out to make a fool of you, I just like open discussion.

Well I use not only the very last bit of the tip but sometimes a little further up, as on my old soldering iron the tip wouldn't always heat up enough. So it's still the tip just not always the tip of the tip. I think my biggest problem is cleaning the iron. I don't know, I must be doing something wrong. I normally clean the iron when it is on but now I'm thinking maybe too much hot/cold/hot/cold can be bad. So I will clean it properly when it is off and use a damp sponge when it is on. Right now if I tin it the solder doesn't spread nice and smooth, it forms small masses or balls on the tip, and I could actually see some of it burning away and going brown, whethter due to dirty solder or dirty tip I'm not sure.

[sir_modulus]

I use the bulk of my iron too, the tip for soldering tight pads, and the sides of the tip to heat for desoldering (because the tip is too sharp to heat up a good area. I've had the blue thing (happen, as well many other colors with Weller soldering iron tips (regardless of level of use)). It is my guess that the coating on the tip can change color at different temperatures (I've had it glow, blue, purple and a copperish color (no, it's not the tinning stripping off))

Cheers,

Nish

[Nasse]

Some kind of thin film of oxide or something, so thin you can see trough it, and it filters light like thin film of oil on water, all colours of the rainbow, that´s my quess. But I believe if you try to colour your aluminium or zink pedal by heating it, it will melt. Reminds me about some nasty and poisonous stuff gunsmiths and hobbyists use to make their gun metal parts black or blueish chemically. There was a thread few years ago about metal colouring and I found one old book and there was some methods for aluminium, one of them suggested applying very fresh chicken egg on just cleaned aluminium, add some heat and it should turn black, but not very tolerant to wear. I think people who make knives (popular hobby in northern europe) have some knowledge too

[Paul Marossy]

Wow. I didn't know that about Weird Al's family. That's a serious bummer. 

Anyhow, I clean my soldering iron off every once in a while with a 3M pad until it's shiny again. I guess that's not recommended, but it seems to work well for me.

[niftydog]

Wo, that's gotta make it hard to write novelty songs!


Anywho...

When you buy a new tip, take a look at it before you use it. You'll notice that the very tip (maybe 5-8mm) is plated, that is the only part of the tip that the manufacturers intend you to use. What you do with it once you've bought it is of course you own perogative. Removing that plating is bad, so you should file or sand a tip clean because it damages or removes that plating - the tip will never work as good as it should do once that has occured.

As for using the side of the tip, I can't say I've ever had to do that - even on really big joints like pot casings and heatsinks. All I could suggest is that I have high quality irons and various sized tips at my disposal and I guess they can cope with everything I throw at them.

[sir_modulus]

Lol, I've got a nice weller iron, but I'm just too lazy to switch the tips on it. What sort of tip would you suggest for pot casings? Normally, I just use the thin tip, and use the 5-8 tinned mm's of the tip (by holding the iron at a bit of an angle) to heat stuff up more, but it rarely works for things like pot casings (and burns through heatshrink...I end up using the sleeve of the tip (the unscrewable holder...thing)...bad I know  ).

Cheers,

Nish

[formerMember1]

sir_modulus:

I use a Weller too.  I like the pointy conical tip(i think ST-7) and i like the screwdriver tip for pot casings.(ST-1 or ST-3)<<<can't remember though...  My iron goes to 45watts, and that is barely enough to do pot casings.  I found that flux works good for pot casings but only a little.

(i know you already know this, but just mentioning for others reading)


I too use the side of the pointy tip to get lugs on jacks, if i don't feel like swapping tips.
I make sure that 5-8mm is well tinned.  I found that i can't make a quality joint with out the tip being tinned and shiny.  It is way quicker to solder joints with a well tinned tip too.
(again, i know you know this sir_modulus, just rambling,.. )

[niftydog]

well, maybe it's not so much the tip size but the capability of the iron that's the key thing here. Yes, tip size will help, but the best thing for it is a fast recovery iron. Having said that, if I were in this position I'd probably try to leave all the heavy soldering till last, swap over to as big a screwdriver tip as I could find and have at it. It also helps to prep the jobs first by heating them up a little so the iron has less work to do - a heat gun work wonders for this, but be sure not to melt stuff in the process!

If I ever get the money I'll be buying a JBC iron. From the moment you turn on the power switch it takes 2 seconds for the tip to reach temperature! Instead of using a large thermal mass as the thing that retains the temperature they use small thermal mass but a hugely powerful power supply. Very, very nice. Had one on demo at work at it just blew us away.

[johngreene]

well, maybe it's not so much the tip size but the capability of the iron that's the key thing here. Yes, tip size will help, but the best thing for it is a fast recovery iron.

yeah, yeah, but try to tell her that. 

[niftydog]

mine IS fast recovery, but she's even less interested second time around!!! 

[Herr Masel]

mine IS fast recovery, but she's even less interested second time around!!! 

Tragic stuff really, but what I don't get is my new tip never cleans properly. I use a damp/wet sponge but whenever I try to tin it the best I get is blobs of solder that don't spread out evenly. Sometimes the solder turns into blobs but doesn't attract to the iron at all, just falls off! Maybe my spunge is too old, or maybe it's the solder or maybe I should of gotten a not so cheap iron, but when I  1. tin  2. solder  3. clean the tip lots of black gunk comes off of it.

[stm]

I have that very same problem with an ERSA 20W soldering iron. The solder just doesn't want to adhere to the tip all around.  I've never used anything to scrap the surface of the tip, and the iron is quite new. I wouldn't say i've used it more than 10 times or so.

The big problem I had in the beginning is that it produced too much heat making the tip blue. When I started soldering it worked fine, but after a couple of minutes temperature got so high that solder clearly changed its properties and didn't flow nicely. Besides, the flux in the solder got burnt very fast leaving some black gunk around.

HINT:

I made an extension power cable with a lamp interrupter in between. I put a 1N4007 diode inside the interrupter and now I am able to run the iron at less power. This really improved things!!! Now it doesn't get overheated, yet temperature is just perfect for PCB soldering work, making solder flow nice and easy.  The interrupter is there to bypass the diode, so I can still have fast heat up and full power when large components (pots and jacks) need to be soldered.  This is like the poorman's temp control.

A guy I now suggested placing Normally Closed microswitch on the iron stand, so whenever the iron is put to rest the power is halved.  He said they impemented this trick at Sony's technical service in Chile to increase soldering irons life when not in use (this was many many years ago--think in the 80's).  Apparently it is better to leave the iron running all day than cycling heat on and off several times a day.

As for the re-tinning problem, I tend to think that maybe my tip was ruined by the extreme heat it got on the initial sessions, or maybe because the solder's flux is not so good (?). Anyway the solder says it is 63/37, which should be better than the lower grade 60/40. I'm tempted to try out a 3M pad to see if I can fix this.

[R.G.]

Liquid solder actually dissolves copper, so over time copper tips get dissolved away to nothing.

Good soldering iron tips are actually plated with metallic iron. Iron does not get dissolved by solder at tin-lead soldering temperatures, so the tips last a long time.

What you see is the iron plating oxidizing in air to the blue-black oxide of iron. I think that's Fe-O2, not rust, which is Fe-O3. Something like that.

In any case, you need to get that off there, or your iron won't transfer heat well. If dipping the hot iron into liquid or paste flux doesn't do it, it's probably best to polish it off with some rubbing compound so as to not abrade away the iron plating. Once you get through the iron plating, the tip will be eaten up in short order.

When you put a new iron plated tip on, always polish it mildly to get off the surface stuff, coat the whole area that you want to be solder covered with liquid flux, and then plug it in to heat. As the flux starts to smoke, feed it solder quickly over the whole solderable area to get a nice tin coat. Covering the usable area in fresh solder paste is good if you can find solder paste.


Or you can just buy a lot of tips.

Oh, yeah. Before putting a new soldering iron tip on, cover the threads in a very thin film of high temperatur anti-sieze compound from the auto parts store. Then you can actually get it back off to put the next new tip on.

[johngreene]

When a solding iron will no longer tin it means that either the oxidation is so bad that the flux can't eat through it or the plating at the very tip has worn/burned away (station style irons). You've just aged the tip significantly and if the plating is gone, it's time for a new tip. There's a paste you can get in a little can for tinning soldering iron tips. It's basically a flux with a little bit of solder mixed in. It does a pretty good job of tinning even the worse irons. The tip cleaners that are basically a brass brillo pad work better than sponges. The ideal is to never, ever let the iron sit for any length of time without the tip tinned. It can take only minutes for the tip to develop a layer of oxide. I try to keep enough solder on the tip such that it forms a little drop on the end. High heat is always bad so temperature controlled irons can have the longest tip life as long as you don't run them at 800+ degrees all the time. Although soldering is a lot easier with the higher temps. Catch 22. If I'm not going to use the iron for more than a few minutes I'll turn the temp down below 700 degrees. Although it's pretty frustrating trying to solder if you forget to turn it back up.

--john

[Herr Masel]

Sorry to bring this thread back, but my tip is acting really strange. I got some flux paste, I dip the tip in it and quickly take it out, then I tin it. The thing is though that it goes all black and brown and gunky dirty if I don't immediately use it to solder, and by the time I get one or two solders done it needs to be cleaned, dipped in the flux and tinned again. If I don't tin it after dipping in the flux paste it takes it about fifteen seconds to stop being nice and shiny and turn into a dull, dirty gray. What the hell is going on? The solder I use is 60/40 alloy, 0.8mm and 2.2% flux. I don't know about the paste, there's nothing of value written on the container.

In any case, you need to get that off there, or your iron won't transfer heat well. If dipping the hot iron into liquid or paste flux doesn't do it, it's probably best to polish it off with some rubbing compound so as to not abrade away the iron plating. Once you get through the iron plating, the tip will be eaten up in short order.

When you put a new iron plated tip on, always polish it mildly to get off the surface stuff, coat the whole area that you want to be solder covered with liquid flux, and then plug it in to heat. As the flux starts to smoke, feed it solder quickly over the whole solderable area to get a nice tin coat. Covering the usable area in fresh solder paste is good if you can find solder paste.

What kind of rubbing compound should I use? Can I use medicinal alcohol to clean the tip?
Thanks.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Herr Masel, you really shouldn't be using that paste flux for electronic work, you should use flux (resin) cored solder. because, that paste flux is very corrosive & will gradually tend to eat through your wires.
On the bright side, alcohol won't damage your tip. I don't think it will help, but it won't hurt it.

[Herr Masel]

Herr Masel, you really shouldn't be using that paste flux for electronic work, you should use flux (resin) cored solder. because, that paste flux is very corrosive & will gradually tend to eat through your wires.
On the bright side, alcohol won't damage your tip. I don't think it will help, but it won't hurt it.

Well I use rosin core solder but it doesn't stop the tip from getting black and gunky every ten seconds. What am I doing wrong?

[gaussmarkov]

I have that very same problem with an ERSA 20W soldering iron. The solder just doesn't want to adhere to the tip all around.  I've never used anything to scrap the surface of the tip, and the iron is quite new. I wouldn't say i've used it more than 10 times or so.

The big problem I had in the beginning is that it produced too much heat making the tip blue. When I started soldering it worked fine, but after a couple of minutes temperature got so high that solder clearly changed its properties and didn't flow nicely. Besides, the flux in the solder got burnt very fast leaving some black gunk around.

stm describes my experience perfectly.  my iron is probably marginally too hot.  i have found that wiping the tip on the damp sponge just before retinning and making a joint brings the temperature down nicely for tinning.  all the gunk (i leave my iron tinned after using it) comes off easily on the sponge.  if i wipe on the sponge and do not tin immediately, the tip goes from bright shiny to dark blue, so that's gotta be the oxide forming.  but again, i can wipe that off on my sponge.  does it work that way for you, herr masel?  keeping the tip tinned is important.

[formerMember1]

i think your iron is set too high, I have a Weller solder station.  If you put the variable control on 5(max) the iron turns brown, same as yours, if i turn i todwn to 3, it is perfect.  I turn the iron on, with the control on 5(max), in about 30 seconds it is heated to melt solder,  i then quickly tin it, it runs perfect and tins the tip uniformly, with no globs or anything hangin(unless you apply too much solder), i then put the iron in the holder and then turn the control down to 3, it stays tinned, and is hot enough to solder with, actually perfect for wires, switch, and i turn it down to 2 1/2 for resistors an caps, etc,... so that when i'm done with heating the joint it cools quickly, and it doesn't stay too hot, and move, on me,...

The radio shack irons are junk, and they turn brown like this easily, becuase you can't adjust it, they are mainly for light hobby work i think,....

So, try tunring the temp/watts down a little,...