Atten sponge holders rust after single use

[tomclarkme]

I just bought 20 Atten soldering stations for a class this fall. The chrome sponge holder tray of every unit rusted after a single use. I'm not sure of the correct remedy for this.

[adafruit_support_bill]

There are various rust removal products - mostly different formulations of acids. They won't make it shiny (or rust resistant) again, but they will get you back down to the metal.

Re-plating would be pretty expensive. Instead, you could give them a couple coats of RustOleum enamel and bake it after each coat (~200F for 20 minutes should do.) Be sure to rough-up the shiny surfaces with some steel wool before applying the paint.

[tomclarkme]

By remedy, I meant customer service solution.

I call attention to a defective product, and instead of an apology, I'm advised on the work I could do to accommodate that defect? Wow.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Sorry, I wasn't aware that we sold the trays in your photo.
The Atten support page link seems to be broken at the moment. I will look into it.

[adafruit2]

do you mean these stations?
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3565
they're pretty low cost, we'll see if they'll sell us replacements, we don't have any stocked and it could take a while until they get back to us. although, we haven't heard of this before so perhaps check the students arent soaking the sponges totally wet.

for now - you can use them as is, or line em with common tin-foil, the rust doesn't affect functionality!