You have received a lot of very good responses that are based on a lot of
experience.  J. Moffitt being one of the best.

My 2 cents worth!
1)  The maintenance of the soldering iron is IMHO is widely overlooked or
not done.
2)  It appears we are driving the responsibility down to the operator to be
the most knowledgeable without thoroughly providing the training and
understanding of how an iron works and how to manage temperature.  Not that
they cannot learn it is just obtaining the time needed to teach them.  In
some cases it is hard to get an operator to remove a tip and clean an iron
on a daily bases let alone have them pick and choose tips and select
temperatures.
3)  We spend more on training instructors than we do operators, supervisors,
and maintenance people when it comes to soldering.  The latter are the ones
who should share the responsibility for iron, tip, and temperature
selections.
4)  Have you ever seen any documentation or information on locations of
ground plane connections given to an operator prior to rework so they could
select tips and temperatures?

Jon   PS I teach 700 degrees F for initial and 600 degrees F for rework
using RMA flux. (The hardest in my experience for selecting tip and
temperature for point to point soldering is a J-Leaded component.)



 -----Original Message-----
From:   Lou Hart [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Thursday, December 28, 2000 12:19 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        [TN] Soldering iron temperature

TechNetters, believing that the only dumb question is the one you don't ask,
let me inquire - How do you choose temperature for a hand soldering iron?
(I'm not referring to the Metcal ones with those special tips.)

I am working with our production people to prepare work instructions.  For
hand soldering, some people say 700 F, some 750 F.  My suspicion is there
may not be one temperature to use all the time.  Any comments would be much
appreciated.

Lou Hart
Quality Assurance Manager
Compunetix
412-858-6184

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