Re: Cold heat?
 

my son got one - it does work

but

the tip has to maintain electrical contact on both sides of the tip for it to heat

and as someone else said, there is voltage present across the tip (I dont know how much)

I like my Weller. Never yet grabbed it by the wrong end and burned myself. And Ive never NEEDED to stick a soldering iron in my pocket 3 seconds after using it.

If you need to cool an iron quickly you simply wipe it with a wet sponge or paper towel.

Neat product, but I thinks its a solution in search of a problem.

Re: Cold heat?
 

Don't forget "hot water heater" :D

Re: Cold heat?
 

I've used one.

It does work- it heats up quickly and cools down quickly. You can even solder with it.

The problem is that it's pretty useless for doing more then quick fixes. It heats up quick, but it has so little thermal energy that youd be sitting there for an hour trying to heat up a large joint enough to get solder to flow properly. So don't even bother trying to solder up a crimp connector. For small PCB stuff, it's pretty snazzy. I wouldn't want to do more then a few joints with it though. An electric iron may take a few minutes to heat up, but once it does it will stay hot for as long as you want. It may seem silly, but waiting those few seconds for the coldheat to warm up is annoying.

I'd say its not overly useful for FIRST, but it could be handy for the average joe. It certaintly is a lot faster and easier then a butane powered iron and more portable then a corded. There is more concern with keeping it clean, as solder stuck on the tip fouls it up right quick.

-Andy A.

Re: Cold heat?
 

We have one, but I didn't like it. It is true to its word of heating up and cooling quickly, but metal must be in the little slot for it to work. It might be good for small jobs around the house, but I did not find it very useful for robotics.

Re: Cold heat?
 

This is quite true as I myself had this same problem. It is OK if you want to solder a cheap fix, but if you try and solder for anything complicated like r/c cars or robots it is pretty ineffective. I once tried to solder my r/c car with it and before the solder melted the plastic encasing around the tip melted and it has never worked since. My advice leave it alone, any plug in wall solder gun will work fine and there really is no reason why someone needs to put their solder gun in their pocket after using it. This is my experience and may be biased, so don't follow my every word if you choose.

Re: Cold heat?
 

That limits what gauge wires you can solder with it. The average person who sees it will think it will totally replace, or they'll have no need to buy a regular soldering iron. It may be fine for 18, 20, 22 but wait until they try it with 12 or 14 and become disgusted with it. What they would expect is for it to do everything and then they'll wind up with not only the Cold Heat but also cold solder joints! :rolleyes:

Re: Cold heat?
 

I'm not exactly sure how it works, but there is a spark somewhere in the thing and that's how it gets the solder hot. however, there is still a possibility of you burning yourself with this iron. my team decided to stay away from this and stick to the normal irons. according to one guy, this thing is also hard to get into small places. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6151688/

Re: Cold heat?
 

Actually it works pretty well. It uses two conductive plates with a insulator between the two. When the two prongs connect (like soldier touching them) electricity flows. The resistance in the soldier is what causes the melting. The tip itself is quite resistant to heat.
What I liked
The tip appears to be Teflon coated and it is impossible to get soldier to stick to it.
A nice little light.
You can touch it right after soldiering (It will be hot but just an uncomfortable hot not a AHHH!!! hot)
I like how It is held like a pencil as apposed to how you hold normal irons like a paint brush.

What I didn't like
You can't do big projects with it.
It's kinda thick (But I have small hands) and takes getting used to.
It does use electricity, 1.5 volts, so keep that in mind when working with electronics.
Also I found the tip to be brittle and I broke it pretty quickly. :( Though the new tip I bought seems to work fine.

Ultimately It's pretty good at hobby, small scale electronics, and quick fix tasks. I like using it to remove soldier.

Re: Cold heat?
 

It works... Kind of.

The carbon tip breaks fairly quickly for me, and because of the way it is shaped... It makes you hold it so that if you were using a "real" one, you would make a cold jont every time.But other than that it works just fine.

Re: Cold heat?
 

I tried using one a couple of times, but I had gotten so used to using the regular corded ones that the cold heat just annoyed me. I didn't like having to get the piece of metal in between the tip just to get it to heat up, and it doesn't get in between close spaces as well as a regular corded soldering iron because of the tip's shape. It's good to have when you need to fix something minor really quickly though.

Re: Cold heat?
 

the real problem with the coldheat iron is this. For proper soldering you need to heat both surfaces that are being soldered together. If you are soldering two wires then the iron should touch both, or if you are soldering an IC to a pad on a circuit board, the iron should touch both.

One way to help get good heat transfer is to put a bit of solder on the tip of the iron. The little bubble of solder helps conduct the heat to both parts.

Ok, so now you have this ColdHeat thing. How do you get the two contacts to touch and heat both surfaces at the same time? And how would you put a dab of melted solder on the tip of the iron.

I dont think either is possible. Therefore you would have to overheat one of the surfaces and blob solder onto it, making the solder blob transfer the heat to the other surface.

Weller makes a nice cordless soldering iron that uses AA batteries. You can either use alkalines or NiMH rechargeables - it works like a traditional soldering iron.

Beauty mark? <= oxymoron or marketing spin?

Re: Cold heat?
 

even for battery cables? i havent ever tried to use a cold heat so i dunno but our 80W one makes it really easy.
and with such a small tip it may take a lot of heating to get a good joint with bigger wires

Re: Cold heat?
 

definately not! for soldering the terminals on the battery cables you need an 80 to 150W iron or gun-style

or a propane / butane torch.