Can somebody pls recommand a good soldering station under 100 dollars. Preferably if u can find it in romania at that price

Hi, I have an issue with the iron I purchased recently. it comes with 4 tips and it turns out one of them refuses to work with my phone charger. When I set the iron into work mode it just restarts when using this tip. Surprisingly enough when I connect the cable to the pc its slow as hell but it heats up and works properly. what could be the issue ?

Any thoughts? I manage a cold facility. I’ve come across some decent guns that work great in the shop, but most all of them struggle when we have to solder components in place. Curious to see what some of you might have come across. Thanks in advance.

Hi. I have been soldering without problems on different materials, but I have found a particular material where the solder I use does not adhere.

It is to solder a thin wire on the material (not pcb). The surface to be soldered is relatively small (2x2mm approx)

it's electronics, a Silver Plated Copper Wire into Nickel Plated (or gold plated) surface..

I can't find flux locally (small city) and I'm NOT IN USA

Taking into account the shipping costs of the stores in my country, my best choice is to buy the flux on aliexpress.

I know there are many imitations, and low quality products, but there are also good quality Chinese things.

In short, first I want to know what kind of flux is suitable for my purpose.. (I have never used flux). more liquid or more solid?

And I have read that there are different types: "Rosin, Resin Mildly Activated, NoClean, Acid...."

Has anyone used or compared any of these brands?

relife, best, mechanic, ma ant, xxz, amaoe, ppd ("expensive")

Do all these Chinese brands come from the same factory or is there really a difference between them?

thanks.

I got a board with BGA chips as small as even 2.5 x 2.5 mm.
How to reball them?

In particular, how to clamp a chip in place together with a stencil so it doesn't move when planting the balls?
Or for chips small like that should I just place the balls manually? But even if so, then that rules out the method with paste instead of balls... how to do that?

I already have a hot air station and a preheater, but I don't have a good stand / jig / stencil set yet.
I'm quite experienced in general soldering, but I want to level up and get into reballing ;)

Hello. Recently I bought t12 soldering station for hobby. I use k, bc2, ils, d16 tips only, and I selected them in menu. But I can't remove selection from J02 tip. It's blocked. What I can do to remove it? Any suggestions?

https://preview.redd.it/4dozuqnblu1e1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eecc13f4df6c12d9f8c9480fad3376bda06c7f3b

from today

first one

in the photos are some practice boards i got off amazon. its pretty clear to see which one i did when i first began, and which one i did just today. when i look at my first one, i cringe. but when i look at my newest one, i feel proud of myself. i recently got some kester .02" solder and used it for the first time on the newer board. today i just did the IC's, everything else was done already. for the newer one, ignore the burn marks around the qfp ic in the corner of the newer board, i forgot i set my temp to max just to see how high it went and only realized my mistake once i finished soldering it. my joints in the newer board are better than the first board for sure, but im still not where i wanna be. but because of the diameter of the kester im now using, portion control is SO much easier so hopefully ill get to where i wanna be soon, just need to practice more. i also finally remembered to use way less flux than i usually use, and that was a great move. also for the smd led's on the newer board, i was using a very, very trash quality rosin core for them and it was very pasty, so what you see is as good as i was able to get. and yes, i have thrown it out since i have the kester solder. im gonna get a few more practice kits off amazon i think, then move onto working on actual devices(i have 2 large plastic bins full of all different kinds of old and broken devices). all advice to become even better, or just comments about this, are all welcome.

Im not very good at this, but I know the basics. Thing is, I tried to desolder the DS4 sticks to replace them and it was an absolute pain. I had to bump the temperature of the soldering iron, and it made the tip to oxidize very fast. I did it, but it took a lot and it was a mess in the end... Took 4 tips and Im not proud of it.

My question is, how do I deal with this stuff that requires a high temperature without bumping up the temperature of the soldering iron?

I've been using a clone C245 Soldering station for almost 2 years now and I've been only using GVM alternative tips, they go for 8 bucks and work fairly good to me, it took me almost a year to wear them out and i work every day with them. Is there really a major difference between a JBC original cartridge and a Chinese cheap one? like a 30 dollar difference?

Hello! I wanted to get into soldering and got some tools from my dad (Sn60Pb40 solder, soldering iron and soldering rosin (google translated)) and I'm wondering, is this enough to start soldering as a beginner or do I need to buy some stuff?