How To Clean Solder Iron Tips

How to Clean Soldering Iron Tip.

How to clean solder iron tips. Then slide the retaining nut over the tip and sleeve and tighten it using your hands. Use fluxes Spongeless and metal wool to remove small amounts of contaminants from your soldering iron tips during soldering circuit board or any other components. Its something of a vi-vs-emacs war about which is better but whatever.

This should lead to a clean shiny tip ready for use. Push the soldering iron tip into the chemical cleaner until the entire rusted area is submerged. Heat your soldering iron up to the low end of a typical work range generally between 280 and 320C.

Once clean and shiny perform tinning and now your tool is ready to use. This step will coat the iron in a mixture of flux and solder. Cleaning the iron is usually done with either a damp sponge or brass turnings.

Wipe the iron on a damp sponge to remove the excess. When pre-cleaning is necessary for plated tips they should be cleaned with a mildly abrasive emery cloth and may require an acid flux to remove the oxides before tinning or re-tinning. Use stainless steel wool flux and thick clothe to clean the tip.

Then dip the tip in the cleaner and do a slight twist action. Once the re-tinning product melts around the tip hold it for several seconds and then clean the tip using dry cleaning methods like brass wool or an automatic. Be careful not to over-tighten the locking nut.

Wipe the iron on a damp sponge to remove the excess. This will protect the iron from oxidation as the solder serves as a sacrificial buffer zone against oxidation it oxidizes rather than our tip. This is because as the soldering iron expands and contracts quickly.