Hakko Soldering Gear Tips (FX-888D & H503W)

Hello, how are you going?  Today you are going to be looking at a tutorial where we look at two of our favourite soldering irons.  Now these guys are awesome, they’re by Hakko. 

I’m Sam from Core Electronics and today we’ve got the FX-888D Soldering Iron, Soldering Station I should say and the Hakko Red 60W Iron.  And really we’re going to be unboxing these, taking a look at some of the features of them and taking a look at which one is going to be right for you.  Now we go into some of the technical details and pros and cons in the article but we’ll actually go through and look at how physically they would sit on your work bench and which one is going to suit your projects.

So let’s take a look, this is our Soldering Station from Hakko. So we have a nice little instruction manual here, some ah, cardboard boxing so there’s the wand, the soldering wand that will connect up to our station. 

01:04 Alright, there’s our soldering iron stand, nice all metal design.  We’ve got a high quality sponge and a brass cleaner and we have the station itself. So I’m going to get rid of some of this packaging.

Right, as you can see  we’ve already got quite a bit more to go on. So in the box you’ll get a Manual which is down there, the Soldering Iron, really good quality iron. It’s got a great Hakko Tip on here with a plug which we’ll connect to the Soldering Station, the Soldering Stand where you can leave your iron while it’s hot and you’re not using it, and the cleaner.  So this is a Soldering Station, it looks a little bit different to a Soldering Iron.

Now the key difference here is with a Soldering Iron, a stand alone iron like this guy, the heater element, you know, the control circuitry it’s very simple device.  It’s built into the handle here and you simply have something you can plug into the wall and solder with.  Now this is awesome to keep in the tool box, something like this, if you get yourself a good quality one it’s only going to cost you no more than say $20 or $30 which is great. It’s super portable but if you’re working on a bench top and you want, and you know you’re working with different types of components, different solder profiles so lead free versus leaded, solder have slightly different melting temperatures and ideal soldering temperatures you know you want something that has really good stand you’re going to want a Soldering Station.

Now this guy is a Digital Soldering Station from Hakko,so it’s got the connector for your wand, and this just has the heating element in it and it draws its power and control circuitry from the Station here.  Now with this unit you can adjust the temperature digitally, it’s got a little read out there, a 7 segment read out. You can control the temperature Up, Down, you can set 5 profiles so 5 sort of pre-sets of temperature for soldering. It’s got everything, it’s got a password protection system  in case you don’t want people messing with your soldering iron profiles. Or you’ve got kids, you know you don’t want to accidentally turn them on and burn themselves. Everything like that, Electro-static Safe certified device and fantastic quality. 

03:18 So, which one would you choose? Well I guess it depends on what you’re doing. Ideally they both have their place in a Tool Kit.  They both have their place in your  collection of electronic tools because as I’ve said, this guy, your stand alone Soldering Iron, super high quality unit is going to be right at home in your tool box, you know in your on the go kind of kit if you’re out somewhere not at your work bench and you need to repair a cable or fix up a quick solder join that might have gone dry something like that.  Then you’re going to want to keep one of these here, you don’t want to have to lug this around and find somewhere to put it and all the rest, it’s too much effort. 

03:57 But on a bench, this is the clear winner, takes up almost no room with its super slim profile which is awesome and it’s going to give you adjustable temperature control, all those wonderful things we talked about precise to I think  you know +/-  1 degree, I could be wrong but it’s around that, really accurate accurate device. And it’s got all those extra digital features and it’s not that expensive which is super cool. High quality stand, all metal.

So, yeah, I hope this has given you a bit of insight into some of the differences. They’ve both got replaceable tips, they’re both going to last you ages and ages and ages, years and years and years if you look after them properly and that’s all. The one thing I guess you could take away is that the Soldering Station comes with a stand and your brass wool cleaner and your sponge whereas your stand alone doesn’t have that, it’s got a simple little pop up stand just so you don’t put it down and burn something but you’re going to want to pick up an extra stand that has a built in sponge or cleaner so that you can look after your tip properly.  Yeah, I guess that’s it, if you’re actually looking at how to solder then take a look at our Soldering 101 Tutorial, that’s where we go into the techniques and what is solder and all that kind of thing. So if you’re a bit confused about soldering head over there and check it out otherwise, these are our two awesome Soldering Iron products that I recommend for your workshop.

That’s all for today guys, have a great day and I’ll see you next time :-)