Electronic – recommended wattage for soldering station

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I'm looking at buying a new soldering station and trying to figure out what would be the right wattage. I'm going to soldering everything from electronic components (not much SMD, if any) to 16mm2+ cables.

Everywhere I look for recommendations everyone keeps warning about getting an iron thats too powerful. What I don't get though is why it should matter, given that you have a soldering station that maintains a set temperature. It's not like a 120W iron will spin out of control compared to a 15W iron, if anything it'll just keep the temperature from dropping when utilised.

Can you get a high quality soldering iron with set temperature that's too powerful? Is the only downside that the iron tends to get more bulky with higher wattage? Or am I just plain wrong?

Best Answer

At work, I have been using a solder station from Weller. It had a 80W iron, which was still very handy: Not longer that 18cm, a not too thick handle, and the heater was as thick as a pencil. The tip was exchangable, we had fine, needle-like tips for soldering SMDs as well as more bold ones for thicker cables like 2.5mm² and more.

Sometimes, I also soldered more heavy things like ground straps with it, but this isn't fun. The iron had not enough power, and due to it's size, also not enough heat capacity. I had to set the iron to 480°C and wait a moment before I could solder. The result was... well, there was an electrical connection, but I wouldn't call it reliable.

It is clear that this temperature is far to high, the flux just burned, the tin had a bad consistency, the tip didn't like it, and you can apply too much heat.

We also once had do solder lots of thick cables like 16mm², therefore we got a very strong solder iron, I guess a minimum of 150W.

So, my personal conclusion is that a regulated solder station in the range of 60-100W with exchangeable tips of different size is fine for standard jobs from small SMD soldering up to standard mains cables. For that 16mm², you should have an extra iron, I recommend at least 150W, or more. (Also, that 16mm² stuff is usually not that sensitive to over-temperature.)