Soldering with a Cold Heat tool.


N

NIevo

Member
Has anyone here ever tried using one of those battery operated Cold Heat soldering tools? I got one as a gift a couple years ago and for the life of me cant get it to work worth a darn. I don't know if it's me, the tool, or the solder that comes with it but I can't get it to flow. Tried to solder my track joints and it would just ball up and fall onto the ballast.

Is there something I'm doing wrong or are they just junk and I should get a real soldering iron? If so what do you guys recommend for a cheaper one. I don't solder that much so I don't want to go overboard.
 
I have seen those in action by people that knew how to solder and they went flying but I dont know havent used one myself.

I have 2 guns floating around here but I went with an iron. Lowes has a Weller 25W that I picked up was about 10-15 bucks. Went to radio shack and got the .22 dia rosin core solder. It is very fine and flows fast so less heat in critical places.

There was another thread last week on soldering as well might be more info for you there as well.
 
I think they work okay on smaller jobs, track takes a wee bit more heat than it can dish out.
I like mine, but the tips are very fragile.
 
Seems to require very fresh, very powerful batteries.. I started using as thin of solder as I could find.
 
I've only used mine for small jobs like soldering decoder wires and LEDs. I don't think it kicks out enough heat to quickly and effectively solder rail joints.

One thing I did discover when soldering LEDs, is that if you touch both LED leads with the two prongs of the soldering tool, the LED will light. A quick way to test it to see if you've destroyed it by over heating it. Don't ask why I know this ;)
 
I'm with Jeffrey on this. I inherited from my Brother in Law one of them. Still a lot easier to use a real soldering iron. I use a 25 watt Weller for almost all electrical work including soldering to the rails. The "state of the Art" super dupper, It won't burn you, hawked by Billy Bob on the We give them away free for only 4 payments of 19.95 Channel (plus $25 shipping and handling) battery operated one sits in the box for something to give me a laugh now and then. Most everyone that has tried them say they just don't work except for very fine wires if you get it positioned just right. IMHO it's easier to use a good pencil iron.
 
I have to agree about track joints......the cold heat iron just doesn't seem to have enough heat. There is a cold heat PRO model that does an OK job, but it uses more batteries and on things like rail joints you end up changing batteries about every 20 joints or so. I save mine for those "gotta have the cordless" situations and use a radioshack dual wattage (15/25) iron the rest of the time
 
I have one and it works fine on small wire. I tried using it on some heavier wire and it didn't work well. I agree, the rails will act as a heat sink and the Cold Heat gun will not be able to get the metal hot enough to melt solder.

Doug
 
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