JP1 Remotes

yeah, it's pretty disappointing.

I had just read an article about the inventor and it made a big deal about his sucess in marketing it...the radio shack deal, too. However, today I used it for a non-remote project that involved de-soldering and re-soldering a resistor and soldering a wire tip to a scraped-off trace.

With a little dab from my flux pen, it wasn't too hard to melt a blob of solder and make it stick to the trace. Then, it just melted it again to attach the wire. This may be the best use of this iron: attaching blobs to flat surfaces. But I definately could not have used it on the small traces inside most remotes or to attach an EEPROM. The tip requires too much conductive area to work.

De-soldering the resistor was a disaster because (and I know it's a bad habit), I applied too much force to the tip of the soldering iron in an attempt to hold down a PCB while applying tension to resistor lead on the other side of the PCB. I broke the point, such as it is, off the end of the soldering iron. I could still use it after, but I needed even more conductive area to make contact and get it to heat up.

It's too bad. I really like the way it feels in my hand and I love the portability and convenience. I will have to get a replacement tip and try to practice more. For twenty bucks, I still want to keep it. There are definitely some outdoor lighting projects that I want to use it for.

The butane powered soldering iron from radio shack is also $20 and comes with the 2 tips. (Normal point tip and a torch tip) I think the cold heat soldering iron is a novelty item. I was also a little concerned about the quality of the tip and the unreliability of creating a good connection of tip to wires.

The butane one is nice because it works just like a regular soldering iron. Of course a regular electric powered soldering iron is still cheaper than either the butane or cold heat ones. However if you are looking for a cordless soldering iron, I'd skip the cold heat one.

I purchased one of these from my local hardware store.
I personally don't like it, and like many of the other gadgets I’ve purchased this ones going to go in the junk heap.

Okay here’s the scoop.
It requires 4 AAA batteries. Once you turn it on it has a little white led that helps light up the work area (kind of neat). It’s a little bulky but fits comfortably in your hand.

The soldering tip is split into to half’s separated with about a 1/8" space. To begin soldering you must bring both of those tips in contact with metal. Once you do a red led lights up and you can apply solder to the contact point.

The problems I ran into were, first my tip wasn't split evenly. One half was lower then the other so I had to find the correct angle to hold the unit to get the two tips in contact with metal. Once in contact and you begin adding solder you can't move the soldering unit because if you do it will lose contact, and because it cools down so fast it easy to mess up the solder joint.

Also it should be noted that the unit tends to arc a lot. Because its actually passing electricity to the tip to heat it up it arcs when in contact with the metal your soldering. (PS, it arcs even more as the batteries drain)

Another problem on a few occasions was a piece of solder got stuck between the gap on the two tips. This stuck the unit in the on position, and I had to shut the unit off using the switch, wait for it cool and use a small knife to remove the trapped solder.

Perhaps my unit was defective from the start, with the uneven tip. However I didn't have much success with it, and don't recommend it to anyone.

Cheers,

DZ

PS: incase your wondering I paid $19.99 Canadian.

Perhaps my unit was defective from the start, with the uneven tip

yes, I found that the tips are kinda fragile. It may have broken in transit. I was planning on buying a replacement tip and maybe trying a conical tip, but they are $10 a piece.

I bought one with an extra, smaller tip and that seems to make it easier to use for finer work than the normal tip. Works OK, but takes a bit of getting used to to get the tip just right to make contact. When you do you can seem a little arc.