Is it worth the price for a cheap spare or for soldering classes, or is it junk and not worth the trouble? (I already have a good Weller and Hakko, so this would just be a backup.)

Personally, I don't keep junk/cheap-o tools as spares anymore. I've found that they let you down. Keep an eye out for an older known-quality soldering station. My personal preference is Hexacon Select-o-Trac or Therm-o-Trac units. Partially because I have access to 80 LBS of tips, and partially because, inside, it's just a quad op amp and a switching transistor. I think I paid less than $20 for both of my Select-o-Trac irons, which came from eBay. I found one for Ian at the MIT Flea for around that price, too. I do keep a non-temperature-controlled, grounded tip Hexacon pencil iron in my toolkit though. Thanks, Jonathan

On Jan 21, 2016, at 11:52 AM, Chris Fala via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

Has anyone seen this model before?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/371505966012

Is it worth the price for a cheap spare or for soldering classes, or is it junk and not worth the trouble? (I already have a good Weller and Hakko, so this would just be a backup.)

Thanks, Chris

Personally I tried the knockoff soldering and desoldering stations. I thought they were great until I tried the real thing. So even for occasional use tools, I try to buy good ones if there is risk that the cheap tool can let me down or cause damage. So I slowly replaced all my cheap knock off soldering tools with Hakko or Weller ones. So now I have a Weller digital soldering station, Hakko desoldering gun and even got for a reasonable price a compact Hakko temperature controller soldering pencil for my portable tool case. Btw. This same attitude goes for regular tools. Yes I will buy an air sander, grinding wheel or maybe a hammer from Harbor Freight, but my compressor and wrenches and sockets are just about all craftsman or snap-on. Sometimes fixing the damage caused by a cheap tool is worse than the job itself. Cheers, Corey