I don't know, I would assume that it stays hot as long as you hold the button down?? It's a mystery...
definitely just did that tonight doing the hard drive activity light mod on my xbox... picked up the dvd-rom for the xbox and left the iron on right next to it and didnt see it... got a nice white/yellow/brown oval on my middle finger. and on top of that, after i burned my finger on the soldering iron, i picked up the little stand for it that i use to rest it on when not in use... and thats made of metal...and it was way hot too... now i have my burned middle finger on my right hand from the iron and the tips of my thumb and pointer finger on my left hand are burned from the stand. i suck.
many septics say it, i recal it on the tech-tv vid with zap "so you sodered all they conectors?" scarry 'doc
I think it looks too bulky, also, the tip that comes with it would be useless for most PCB work imo, and the add-on tip looks pretty big aswell. I suppose it's good for portability, but then again I'd rather use my gas iron
Do you know that the L in soldering is silent and not to be pronounced? http://www.meriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=soldering
Javadog, I have been looking at this tool because of my project just might require some soldering , ( lol do you concour?) I read the pdf and the answer to your question is that the tool requries that you be pressing the button and have the 2 sides of the tip in contact with your work for it to heat up. When it does heat up it does so quite quickly .( the doccumentation states that this state is indicated by a white light) I believe I read this here : http://www.thinkgeek.com/files/ColdHeatManualST.pdf I was considering using this for tak (spelling?? ) welding on some of the aluminum skin and rib pieces in my robot but decided against it. ( it does not get nearly hot enough !!) I still want one of these!! I have an old clunky soldering iron that takes 20 minutes to get hot and I got scars from using it time for that iron to be retired or relagated into use as a torture device. ( Joking really seriously ) let me know if you get yours before I get mine and see if there are any things to consider. IM going to be using mine on printed circuit boards and some LED work too . cheery bye scaranhybrid
so does anyone even HAVE this yet? i saw the QVC thing too, but i wanna know if it works OK, i hate waiting for my iron, and i do some LED car work too and i hate bringing the car into the garage (where its darker) to do the work an whatever. or (god forbid) get a freaking extension cord... i hate wrapping those damn things back up. its like the hose *dun dun daa* lol. yea you know it. so. in conclusion. are these things actually worth the $$?
i actually have one myself.. here is what i think of it: It is a neat tool.. and it does heat up to super hotness in a matter of seconds, and cools off in a matter of seconds. I tested it with my own finger and its just slightly warm , and the nothing. The bad thing about this is that the tip is not really taht sensitive. Only a certain point on the tip will trigger it to get hot and i found it extremely annoying constantly moving the solder around trying to find that point or else it just does nothing. When it does work however, it works fine.. creates a few sparks, kinda cool For PCB work, i found that it works very well if you're trying to desolder. But trying to solder is not all that great. Overall, i never touched the tool again and i'm using a regular soldering iron cuz it's much easier to use. Maybe i just don't know how to use the tool correctly but it's not much of use for me.
i have one too and its exacly the same results... i think its just a pos... 25 bucks down the drain...
It'll work nicely for SMD work. The really nice thing is the fast warm up, very nice for brief soldering jobs and field repairs.