The Cold Heat soldering iron.

[Sir Golitech]

I am going to try it on an old video card that I know works.

So I'm curios, did you ever try it on that old vid card? and does it still work?

 

[mysterfix]

No, after all the warnings and such I have not used it. It's sitting on my shelf, I'm gonna donate it to my girlfriend for eyeglass repairs at her work.

 

[EvilCloudStrife]

thank goodness for this thread. guess what i got for christmas..

guess whats going back to the store tomarrow

 

[Moto7451]

This reminds me of a lecture we had in physics. Signs on high-wires that say "Danger High Voltage" are really an oxymoron of sorts because its the current that kills. Static electricity has a huge voltage but so little current that at best its going to surprise you and maybe hurt a tiny bit. Thats also why you can get away with touching things like Van De Graph generators (the things that make your hair go crazy when you touch them ).

Electricity is generally sent from power plants to transformers in extremely high voltage, (relatively) low current forms. This keeps the wires from overheating as low current electricity doesn't heat up wires like high current voltage does (this is something Hoot touched on somewhat I believe). If you notice, fuses, electric circuits in buildings, & breaker boxes are rated in amps, not volts). Countries on the 240v standard have a lot more total power available to them because twice the power can be sent through the same wiring as we use for our 120V circuits without any damage to the wiring (because the amperage is the same).

 

[mysterfix]

This thread refuses to die! lol

 

[pcgamer4life]

Bought one today just to test it out, it goes back on tuesday (work tomorrow.)

 

[eobard]

Someone needs to make a sticky that says "DON'T USE COLD HEAT FOR ELECTRONICS"...

Yes they do. STUCK.

 

[BokiOverclocker]

I had it for 3 minutes and tried few things with it. later on soldering gun was in the garbage container.
This how much i liked the New SUPER soldering gun.

Hey guys, I just picked up one of these bad boys and I must say it works great! It actually works just as advertised. You simply touch the end to what ever your going to solder and the thing instantly heats up and melts the solder.

[/URL][/IMG]
This is a practice run that I did to see how hard it is to use. Very easy indeed.

[/URL][/IMG]

 

[TUK101]

I bought one thinking that it would work ok for welding broken wires on my wood truck or tractor when they are too far away from the house to stretch a cord to etc. Anyways, I tried welding two wires together that had just been taped and twisted together on my old tractor and well..... that cold heat soldering iron wouldnt do it. I have tried it on many different things (not electronics) and it barely melts the solder. I dont know what they did on TV to make it work, (probably had the pieces red hot seconds before filming), but I cannot even get a descent cold weld with it. Stick to the gas or electric soldering irons, the Cold Heat welder is a joke.

 

[Feydd]

Do they even make any mention that this will fry electrical components on the commercial or the box it comes in?

 

[Mboy67]

After reading this I must add as A Mother board Repairer I Work on a lot of Boards all the time. I bought one of these last Fall to try it out since it was on sale. needless to say it does work but it's defiantly not good for sensitive electronics. I did some of my own testing with it on some old not important components and 50% of the time it did damage to them. After playing with it for the day I have put it in a drawer where is still is. My Iron of chose is my Cordless Butane power one.

 

[Shuruga2]

I bought one thinking that it would work ok for welding broken wires on my wood truck or tractor when they are too far away from the house to stretch a cord to etc. Anyways, I tried welding two wires together that had just been taped and twisted together on my old tractor and well..... that cold heat soldering iron wouldnt do it. I have tried it on many different things (not electronics) and it barely melts the solder. I dont know what they did on TV to make it work, (probably had the pieces red hot seconds before filming), but I cannot even get a descent cold weld with it. Stick to the gas or electric soldering irons, the Cold Heat welder is a joke.

Ditto.
I've only ever got it to melt solder once or twice.

 

[TempliNocturnus]

This reminds me of a lecture we had in physics. Signs on high-wires that say "Danger High Voltage" are really an oxymoron of sorts because its the current that kills. Static electricity has a huge voltage but so little current that at best its going to surprise you and maybe hurt a tiny bit. Thats also why you can get away with touching things like Van De Graph generators (the things that make your hair go crazy when you touch them ).

The Hgh Voltage danger signs make sense to me. Voltage is what makes current want to go places. High voltage can make you a canidate for current to travel through, if you get close enough. A car batter can pack alot of current; I've seen 5 amps going through wires in my car, but I could touch (and I have) that wire with 5 amps running through it and touch a common wire and not feel a thing. Why? Because 12 volts is not enough to make current want to travel through me.

If someone does get zapped because they were walking around in an area they shouldn't have, such as one of those transformer stations cordoned off by barbed wire fences, it would be because high voltage caused current to arch over and hit that person. Good point on the 240 vac vs 120 vac though. Sometimes I wonder why we do things so differently here in America.

 

[Neuromancer]

...then I started wondering why in the world the iorn needed to jump up to 800 degrees when solder melts way less themperature than that..

... I will stick to my elcheapo tequnique by pre tinning the wires using $6 iorn...

800 is a little high IMHO, in production we use ours at 725-750 (real soldering irons not this cold iron one). Although the new RoHS non LEad stuff requires more. So our solder pots are up around 800 I believe.

The idea behind using high heat is to melt the solder as fast as possible so that you are not heating up all the components around it.

Use a dirty tip or low heat soldering iron and try soldering a wire into a board... by the time the solder melts so has your insulator



And yup pretinning is a very smart thing to do

 

[asusradeon]

I tryed one and couldn't get along with it.. i wouldn't recommend it... couldn't even get the solder to melt... might just be me though :s

 

[ynnedibanez]

i have one and the only good use i have found for it is fixing guitar cables while on the road.
i would NEVER recommend using it on a motherboard or any other computer parts, (except for power supply or fan wires, but i would still recommend using a butane or powered soldering iron)
it WILL fry chips in a hurry, but it will work on less sensitive electronics, such as amplifiers, provided that you can generate enough heat with it.

 

[therookie]

Cold heat is such a scam ....

 

[lorax26]

I was going to pick one of these up. Good thing I read this thread.

 

[crosshairs]

A friend of mine bought one of these...what a POS....I'm pretty sure he tossed it in the trash the same day.

 

[Mycobacteria]

I hear people are cold welding thier proc directly to the HSF, so the HSF and proc are 1 piece of metal ie no need for AS5.

Has anyone else heard of this?