Good Morning Charles, There has been a lot of new products that have hit the market recently (less than 6 months) which rival the Metcal soldering irons. I would check out JBC, Pace and Hakko. All of these have tips that are half the cost of the Metcal tips and are rated for a longer life, supposedly of course. I, like Bob, dislike the Metcal tip cost and the subpar life. I currently have about 75 MX systems in-house ranging in age from 5 to 18 years and would nothing better than to find a more cost effective system with similar performance and reliability traits. Steve Sauer Mfg Engineer Northrop Grumman, Xetron -----Original Message----- From: Barr, Bob [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 4:56 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] Metcal SP200 soldering Iron My only gripe with the Metcals is the cost of tips vs. their life expectancy. -----Original Message----- From: Charles Caswell [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 4:02 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] Metcal SP200 soldering Iron We currently use older MX systems. My boss wants me to check out the SP200. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------