Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough.
Also I love how you talk about your hobby as some addicts.
Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough.
Also I love how you talk about your hobby as some addicts.
I’m not really the right guy to ask - I don’t have that much soldering experience, and I’m a broke college student - but I’ve found the Pinecil to be Pretty Good™ for my use case of “occasionally soldering things to microcontrollers.”
It accepts power over USB-C, so no need for a bulky (and expensive) base station like a Hakko or Weller. (You do need an AC adapter capable of pushing 65W PD, but if you’re into electronics you probably already have something like that just lying around.) Proper temperature control is also nice compared to the cheap “plug and go” irons.
YMMV, I upgraded to it from a Home Depot butane iron (yes it was as bad as it sounds) so…
Pinecil works OK for small things, but struggles on larger joints because of it’s low power and small thermal mass. Personally, I’d prefer one of the many Hakko/Weller clones for a cheap solution.
Thermal mass is a valid concern, but the v2 can pull 100w from an appropriatly beefy usb-c adapter, and 200w+ from one on the new usb-pd spec (testing is ongoing for that though)