Could someone recommended a suitable soldering iron kit please?
I’m looking to replace some cables on headsets.
How often will you use it? I own a number of devices ranging from 9 Euro to about 1000 Euro. For a one off soldering the 9 Euro iron might be ok. If you work on it every day it is a completely different story.
We used the Weller WES51, ~100USD, and got good results. Much better than the radio shack stuff IMHO.
It will be once in a blue moon stuff. I did have one once but it got lost in a house move and that was cica 6 years ago. Hence a kit as I wanted all the solder etc
I carry this 24V one in the plane, and it has been quite useful a number of times. It even runs off this solar panel
The mains version will do what you want just fine.
Then you just need to learn how to solder
For real electronics work you want to spend a few hundred quid on something like this
I bought this one for my soldering work on my homebuilt.
Previously I only had this cheap iron (less than €10). This is sold through Elfa Distrelec and doesn’t cost more than € 50-60. From what I gathered, good quality (and thin diameter, 0.5 mm) solder is of main importance also. And lead is much easier to use than non lead, at least for non experienced persons. Anyway, with this station and high quality, lead based, 0.5 mm diameter solder, even my PCB connections looks professional, and I have never really soldered anything before except to fix the occasional speaker wire and such. The correct technique is important of course.
That’s a good point; definitely use the “illegal in EU” leaded solder, because it works. You can get unleaded which also “works” and we use some at work but it is specialised Japanese stuff (Almit SR-37) and costs 10x more. We tested many others and they were basically crap.
If you can’t find any (Rapid Electronics still sell it – gosh I remember the days when that reel was £5; that was before it became illegal to use it in most scenarios) I can post you some