Ouch! Damn Cheap Soldering Iron

ComputerSpace

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Never experienced this before...but then again I've never bought a cheap chinese soldering iron before either.

I needed a new iron so I picked up what looked like a nice low wattage one off of ebay. I've used it all of maybe 5 times or so.

Last weekend I was building some cables to connect up my Atari Video Music to my Rockola jukebox. Soldered up one fine. Went to add some solder to the tip to do the next cable and felt a small electric shock in my fingers and hand and thought WTF!?

Touched the solder to the tip again, got zapped again. Not sure what happened inside this iron but geez. Electroshock therapy and electronics repair all in one unit. Wonder what would happen if I were working on a board and the darn thing sent a jolt into the board...?

Anyone ever experience anything like this? Next time I'm buying a name brand iron!

Tom
 
Haven't had one shock me, but I had a cheap Radio Shack soldering gun melt apart. The plastic nearest the tip just started melting and the element started to fall out of it.

-Ian
 
The iron is probably not grounded. With the iron off, use your DMM and measure the resistance between the iron tip and the third prong on the power plug. It should be 1-2 Ohms at the most.

P.S. throw that thing away and get a real iron!
 
I remember in college, the IEEE club used to sell electronics kits as a fundraiser. I remember one dude in the lab said this:

"If the tip got as hot as the handle, this would be a pretty good iron".

ahhahahaha- I love it!
 
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