Adafruit Heat Insert Press/Rig

[holdy97]

Hello all,

For those that may have built the Adafruit heat insert press, there is an issue I commonly run into. The issue is when pressing heat inserts into non-through holes. Because the tip that comes with the soldering iron is a long slender cone, part of the tip always come through the bottom side of the heat insert. If you have material there (aka a non-through hole), the tip ends up burning into the part.

I am wondering if anyone has come across this issue, and if so what did you do? I am considering getting the Hakko T18-D24 tip as it is more of a screwdriver tip and may allow me to press from above as opposed to the tip going inside the insert.

Hope this makes sense
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[dastels]

After starting to work with heat-set inserts I soon picked up an M3 heat-set insert tip: https://www.adafruit.com/?q=insert+for+ ... =BestMatch. Not only do they not protrude like a conical tip, but they heat the insert more evenly and keep it straight.

Non-through holes are also a problem because, unless the hole is deep enough, there's nowhere for the melted plastic (that gets scraped away from the sides of the hole) to go so it can be forced into the threads of the insert.

Dave

[holdy97]

Do you know that the tip you mentioned works with that soldering iron? I remember I previously purchased an different tip and it ended up not fitting my unit.

I see what you are saying about the extra melted-away plastic, but in most cases I'm guessing it's not a huge issue. My biggest concern is being able to do non-through holes without the fine tip poking through

[dastels]

The tips work great with my Hakko. So anything that will take Hakko tips should work fine.

Dave