king.wyatt•23d agoProlific Poster

Walked into a Micro Center last weekend just to browse and left with a new soldering station

Seeing them have a whole aisle dedicated to repair tools with a guy actually walking me through which flux works best for motherboard work convinced me my $12 iron from Amazon was holding me back, anyone else had a store visit change their whole setup?

3 comments

3 Comments

oliver_morgan23d ago

Dude, walking into Micro Center with a cheap iron is practically a rite of passage. I had the exact same thing happen with a Hakko station I still use four years later. The guy at the counter actually showed me how the tip tins differently with quality solder, which made me realize my old iron was basically just a hot stick with a crappy tip. It's wild how much easier board work gets when you're not fighting the tool the whole time. Definitely worth the upgrade once you see what a proper setup can do.

jamesm4823d ago

Man, that's exactly the kind of thing that happened to my buddy Dave. He brought this Radio Shack special into a shop to get help fixing his kids' Nintendo, and the tech spent ten minutes showing him how the cheap iron oxidized the joints instantly. Dave ended up walking out with a used Weller station and a roll of Kester solder, and he still talks about how the guy changed his whole approach. Pretty sure he still has that Nintendo too, which is more than I can say for most of my projects with three kids running around.

grace_bailey23d ago

So @jamesm48, did Dave ever buy that guy a six-pack for saving his Nintendo?