x-tronic 4000 soldering station


Need to buy soldering station, after reviewing a few including Hakko, Atten, Weller came at X-tronic 4000, this one out there includes the hot air gun as well, magnifying lamp, quite a few tips. Temp range from 150C which is suites me, I need 180C to work with WBT solder. Any experience on this from DIY folks would be great, anything I should be concerned about...
Thank you
avs9
Actually the solder iron is minimum 200C, I am afraid this is to high for the solder I use, I guess I looked at the gun temp which has 150C minimum. Hm...
Weller makes about the best there is as far as soldering stations - we have about 5 of them.

Good luck on your project - if soldering wire to connectors make sure you get an iron with enough tip mass to do the job properly.

Peter
Avs9 - I'm not sure why you need station and not the soldering iron. Do you do any work with surface mount?

180degC iron is wrong. Eutectic 63/37 solder (or solder paste) melts at 183degC and it would take forever to solder. Flux would clean oxidation and then evaporate while oxidation would come back. Proper temperature is 700degF (371degC). You can go higher but then flux will evaporate before completing cleaning job. If your solder contains silver you need perhaps 800degF.

I would recommend simple Weller like that one: http://www.amazon.com/WTCPT-Temperature-Controlled-Soldering-Station/dp/B00004W463/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1335131348&sr=8-18

It has tips marked for different temperature ranges. Typical one for typical Eutectic solder (63/37) is marked 7 for 700degF (you can buy different tips) Iron is 60W and adjusts power switching on and off in precise temperature point. Tip's butt has pressed in end piece made of metal that has precise curie point of 700degF (temp point where metal looses magnetic ability). Behind end of tip is small magnet connected to switch. It works really well - seems to be immune to larger objects that sink heat (solders exactly the same small and large objects). It lasts forever and parts are replaceable. My company uses these soldering irons for at least 30 years.

If you want to work with surface mount you need different set of tools. For removal of resistor's and capacitors you need hot tweezers (two soldering irons will do) and for soldering you need syringe with "no clean" flux paste, very thin "no clean" solder (like 0.015") and small hot air pencil + very small temp controlled soldering iron (assuming practical way, right way requires syringe with solder paste). I assume that you can only do 50 mil pitch. For 25 mil pitch ICs you would need hot air column. 20 mil pitch is out of the question. You also need "no clean" solder wick. For thru-hole components all you need is 60W Weller iron.
Kijanki - thank you a lot for the response.
No surface mount work, at least for now, may be later, I am considering playing with capacitors in my CJ PV-12.
I guess you are correct that having the 180C lower iron limit is not practical since it will take a long time to solder as you said. I was gonna use the WBT 4% Ag.
But for now I need to wire the arm, do it a couple of times with different wires, Audio-Note silver arm wire, also C37 litz wire. Some other speakers wiring work as well.
So I was told the soldering station (I do have a very simple radio shack solder iron) will play better since I would be able to ajust the temperature easily. The heat gun could be used for shrinking the colored sleeves onto the cartridge clips.