I recently got my Hakko 888D and I don't know what I'm doing wrong, it's heating up but never high enough to melt solder. I'm using silver solder with a 429.8ºF melting point. At that temp my solder will not melt, I have to max out the machine over 800 to melt the solder and even then it does not melt easily.
Am I doing something wrong or did I get a bad machine?
Problems soldering with new Hakko 888D
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Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
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- adafruit_support_mike
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Re: Problems soldering with new Hakko 888D
Hmm.. a Hakko should go well beyond that temperature.
The obvious way of checking it would be to measure the tip's temperature to see if it matches the temperature on the display. You probably don't have a high-temperature thermistor though. You might be able to get a decent reading from a kitchen thermometer, but that's iffy.
Lead-free solder is harder to work with than the tin-lead alloys, so you might be seeing effects that aren't specifically related to temperature. Let's do a couple comparisons to check:
- Do you have another soldering iron that does melt the stuff the Hakko doesn't?
- Can the Hakko melt regular 60/40 tin/lead solder when it's set to the appropriate temperature (around 350F)?
The obvious way of checking it would be to measure the tip's temperature to see if it matches the temperature on the display. You probably don't have a high-temperature thermistor though. You might be able to get a decent reading from a kitchen thermometer, but that's iffy.
Lead-free solder is harder to work with than the tin-lead alloys, so you might be seeing effects that aren't specifically related to temperature. Let's do a couple comparisons to check:
- Do you have another soldering iron that does melt the stuff the Hakko doesn't?
- Can the Hakko melt regular 60/40 tin/lead solder when it's set to the appropriate temperature (around 350F)?
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.