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"Cold Heat"

T

TXengineer

Guest
Has anyone played with this? Aside from the super huge tip, only good for wiring speaker and AC connections, anyone else even try it?

The local Pep Boys sells a generic I was thinking of throwing in the glove box as an emergency spare.

<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by TXengineer on 01/16/06 04:38 AM.</FONT></P>
 
> Has anyone played with this? Aside from the super huge tip,
> only good for wiring speaker and AC connections, anyone else
> even try it?
>
> The local Pep Boys sells a generic I was thinking of
> throwing in the glove box as an emergency spare.
>

I picked one up at Home Depot for 19.99 and played with it
a couple of times. I wasn't overly impressed, but I don't
think it compares to any of the alternate portable soldering
solutions I've used over the years. The instant cooldown
has its advantages, but there's still no better backup than
a small pencil with a 117 VAC cord on it. In a toolkit, I
think a gas pencil with a battery pencil as a backup and a
wired pencil as a second backup is still the way to go.
Having one of these around the basement shop might save time
in a simple solder task, but at the $20 buck price you get more
versatility out of an oldfashioned wired unit.<P ID="signature">______________
Electricity is really just organized lightning.
~George Carlin</P>
 
> Has anyone played with this? Aside from the super huge tip,
> only good for wiring speaker and AC connections, anyone else
> even try it?

That pretty much sums it up. And even in those cases good luck trying to get the solder to stay hot enough to flow. Much of soldering technique requires the heating up of that which we want to connect, and the cold heat doesn't allow us to do that. Solder just doesn't stick right to cold metal. I gave up on the thing.

Oh, and the wire stripper that comes with it, I broke it on the first try using it. One of the shafts popped out of it. It is still usable, but you have to hold the tool in place correctly. That kind of wire stripper works really well though if you spend the money on a decent one. This was a cheap knockoff...

So don't go throwing out your old weller.
 
"Cold Heat" SCAM ALERT

Of course there is no such thing as "cold" heat. The way these clunkers work is to short out a battery, resulting in a lot of current flow through your junction while you solder. Try that with delicate IC's and you will blast them to oblivion.

There are safety issues as well. Think about shorting a battery - any battery - not designed for that duty cycle and you are talking about leakage at best, overheating and FIRE at worst.

Do NOT buy these "cold heat" irons!!! They are a waste of money.
 
> Has anyone played with this? Aside from the super huge tip,
> only good for wiring speaker and AC connections, anyone else
> even try it?
>
> The local Pep Boys sells a generic I was thinking of
> throwing in the glove box as an emergency spare.
>
They are a pretty good back-up/quick fix kind of tool. You're right - the tip is big.
 
Re: "Cold Heat" SCAM ALERT

> Of course there is no such thing as "cold" heat. The way
> these clunkers work is to short out a battery, resulting in
> a lot of current flow through your junction while you
> solder. Try that with delicate IC's and you will blast them
> to oblivion.
>
> There are safety issues as well. Think about shorting a
> battery - any battery - not designed for that duty cycle and
> you are talking about leakage at best, overheating and FIRE
> at worst.
>
> Do NOT buy these "cold heat" irons!!! They are a waste of
> money.
>
I got one for Christmas from my parents and I use it for sodering speaker cable or making dipole antennas out of twinlead cable but had trouble getting heat transfer to melt the soder<P ID="signature">______________
"I'm a gonna go to hell when I die!" Connan O'Brien

"yay boo, yay boo, it's lots of fun to do, if ya like it holler yay, and if ya don't ya holler boo!"

Connan O'Brien
</P>
 
Re: "Cold Heat" SCAM ALERT

I would imagine you need a really fresh battery to get enough current flow to heat up and melt the solder. I would think also that you really need to control how much solder - I think those things use a 9 volt battery. Too much solder and I doubt the little battery has enough capacity to melt it all. Go for a battery with the highest possible cell voltage.
 
Re: "Cold Heat" SCAM ALERT

There is another issue to deal with...the 'cold heat' iron generates current through the connection that is being soldered to..this current can become inductive in nature when you remove the iron from the connection with the power applied. This will generate enough of a spark to generate a potential static blast to the component, and possibily damage the component. You wonder why NASA and EIA specs don't recommend this type of soldering.


Jim
 
Re: "Cold Heat" SCAM ALERT

> I would imagine you need a really fresh battery to get
> enough current flow to heat up and melt the solder. I would
> think also that you really need to control how much solder -
> I think those things use a 9 volt battery. Too much solder
> and I doubt the little battery has enough capacity to melt
> it all. Go for a battery with the highest possible cell
> voltage.
>

This thing takes 8 AA batteries I do not know if this would be enough power to melt the solder? If I had to guess, I would say no.<P ID="signature">______________
"I'm a gonna go to hell when I die!" Connan O'Brien

"yay boo, yay boo, it's lots of fun to do, if ya like it holler yay, and if ya don't ya holler boo!"

Connan O'Brien
</P>
 
From outta the past....

I vaguely remember, from my TV engineering (studio) days, having a cordless iron similar in side to the "cold heat" thingy. It had a recharger base and a flock of nicads inside. Bright orange in color with some black trim. A wonderfully small tip that heated almost instantly and didn't take very long to cool down. Had a little light shining onto the tip when used. It did all it was said to and was a very nice professional tool, though very spendy.

I think Weller made it. It belonged to the station and, when I left to work in equipment sales, I saw no need to buy one for myself. Anybody know if these things are still? Yeah, I'm too lazy to do a websearch. Wouldn't buy one now anyway but curious......
<P ID="signature">______________
"environmentalism is collectivism in drag."
--George Will (or won't)</P>
 
Re: "Cold Heat" SCAM ALERT

> I would imagine you need a really fresh battery to get
> enough current flow to heat up and melt the solder. I would
> think also that you really need to control how much solder -
> I think those things use a 9 volt battery. Too much solder
> and I doubt the little battery has enough capacity to melt
> it all. Go for a battery with the highest possible cell
> voltage.
>


Ummmmm no...

You can have 239874687234682736478552346523 Volts and it wont mean much unless you have some amperage behind it. Think about how a fuse works. You can run a bunch of volts through it, but it would not melt until you have enough current (to heat it up) running through it.
 
Re: From outta the past....

I think those were made by Wahl. They came in different colors (I remember having a black one). You're right, they were very nice to have. They were really useful if you needed to do some light soldering and didn't feel like dragging out the Weller soldering station and an extension cord, or if you were going to be working far from any AC outlets.

The battery would last about an hour and the tip wasn't big enough to do much of anything other than PC board work, or tinning wires. From the sounds of the cold-heat deal, the Wahl cordless was probably a lot more practical.

And here's a link to the Wahl Iso-Tip:

<a target="_blank" href=http://www.starkelectronic.com/whl7944.htm>http://www.starkelectronic.com/whl7944.htm</a><P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by awsherrill on 01/19/06 11:26 PM.</FONT></P>
 
Re: From outta the past....

> The battery would last about an hour and the tip wasn't big
> enough to do much of anything other than PC board work, or
> tinning wires. From the sounds of the cold-heat deal, the
> Wahl cordless was probably a lot more practical.

Thanks for the link!

Yeah, that looks like the one I used to use. Your description of
battery life/capability jibes with what I remember. Since almost
all of my work was at board level it was even better than the Weller
soldering station. Also was good for BNC's and XLR's but worthless
for PL-259's. Of course, for those, an old fashioned plumbers iron
heated over a fire was sovreign!<P ID="signature">______________
"environmentalism is collectivism in drag."
--George Will (or won't)</P>
 
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