Helpful Tips on Maintaining Your Soldering Tips and Nozzles

Like anything else in life, maintenance and care will lead to longevity, and soldering tips are no exception. Here are a few helpful tips on maintaining the life of your soldering tips and desoldering nozzles. Tips and nozzles will eventually go out over time, but proper tip maintenance will help maximize their life expectancy. What this consists of is regularly cleaning your tips, frequent inspections, and above all else always retinning your tips.

Common methods for cleaning your tips and nozzles are by using non-abrasive tip cleaners such as brass cleaning wire or wet sponges. Brass wire is as its name implies, coils of brass wire, that are softer than the plating on the tip, yet harder than the oxidation that builds up on the tip. With a few stabs of the iron into the brass wire, you can clear away the oxidation while leaving behind a fresh coat of solder. This is an effective alternative to the wet sponge cleaning method which can induce thermal shock to the tip. Using a brass cleaning wire also reduces the possibility of introducing new contaminants to the tip that may otherwise stick to the surface of the wet sponge.

If you find that oxidation has already built up on your tip that the brass wire cannot clean-up, a quick solution we recommend is the HAKKO FS-100 Tip Cleaning Paste in unison with one of our tip cleaners. FS-100 is a lead-free cleaning paste that doesn’t contain diammonium phosphate, also known as “DAP”, which is a harmful chemical and a highly corrosive substance. When it comes to cleaners, HAKKO offers three alternative cleaning tools apart from the more common brass wire and sponge.

These cleaners consist of the FT-700 Tip Polisher, FT-710 Tip Cleaner, and the new FT-720 Tip Cleaner. The cleaners are all lightweight, don’t take up a lot of workspace and as for the new FT-720, can be combined with the FH-200 Holder to maximize workbench space. They each use rotating brushes that scrub away oxides, excess solder, debris, and are designed to be a quicker cleaning alternative to the 599B Brass Cleaning Wire.

Most importantly, above all else with tip maintenance is to always remember to flood the tip with solder, (better known as “tinning”), after usage. By tinning the tip with solder you’re essentially applying a protective barrier that will prevent the elements from promoting oxidation and corrosion when not in use.

By following these steps your tips will last longer and optimal performance of your soldering station can be achieved.

Thank you for subscribing and reading, we hope you found these tips helpful and for more articles and content remember to keep in touch with HAKKO TIPS. For addition information visit us at www.HakkoUSA.com or contact us at 1-800-88-HAKKO(42556) and at [email protected].

-HakkoUSA