Recommendations for wireless/ compact and portable soldering irons

Been looking for a portable soldering iron, would love to get any recommendations :slight_smile:

Pinecil v2!!!

Get it from the pine store with all the extra tips so you don’t have to pay for shipping twice.

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I second the Pinecil v2 or very similar TS101 soldering irons. Other similar, but older, options would be the TS100 and TS80/TS80P irons. All of these accept DC inputs to run so you can use batteries to run them portable. Here is a listing of the models and their power inputs

The TS100 takes a 12-24v 3A DC input via barrel jack
The TS80/TS80P take a PD(12v 3A) or QC3.0(9v 2A) input via USB-C input
The TS101 takes a 9v-24v 3A DC input via barrel jack or a PD or QC3.0 (9-24v <=45W) input via USB-C (some listings don’t explicitly state QC3.0, may still work, not sure)
The Pinecil v2 take a 12-24v 3A DC input via barrel jack or a PD/QC3(12-20v 3A)

The Pinecil v2 is going to be the cheapest, so unless you really want that 9v input of the TS101, I recommend the Pinecil v2. I have a TS100 and Pinecil v2, and love both, and while I haven’t used the Pinecil v2 with an FRC battery, I have with the TS100 at a regional without issue, and wouldn’t expect any issue doing similar with my Pinecil v2.

The TS80/TS80P also had very different tips to the others, that were harder to find and usually more expensive, making it even further my least favorite of the options over and above my dislike of a lack of a simple DC input. For the rest, to my knowledge the tips are completely interchangeable, and while more expensive than tips for say a Hakko iron, are still not too bad assuming you take care of your tips so they last a while.

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We had a lot of success a few years ago with a generic butane soldering iron. No need to struggle with a plug when soldering deep in the robot. It works with the same fuel you use for lighters but didn’t have an exposed flame. We used it at a number of competitions until we lent it to our FTC team and they lost it :frowning:

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Pinecil V2 & Dewalt DCB094K

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Worth noting that these are not allowed at FRC events, per the event rules.

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FWIW, ones that didn’t have an open flame (piezo burners) were legal at one time per a loophole, as the rule was against “open flames”. And even that was in the safety manual, not the admin/game manual.

That’s what I remembered the rules being: nothing with an open flame. But I guess they’ve gotten stricter since then.

If you want a true wireless soldering iron, we use the Milwaukee M12 iron.

The Pinecil is wonderful but to be truly portable it needs a battery pack. Milwaukee M12 takes a drill battery and nothing more.

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It’s not wireless, but for the pit at competition, we bring 2 of these. One for soldering if needed, and the other is fitted with brass tips for installing threaded inserts into plastic. And that way we have an extra if one dies. They take up little space, heat up quickly, are temperature controlled, and have enough power to solder 10 AWG wires if needed. We bought like 10 of them from AliExpress originally for our learn to solder outreach activity, but like them enough to bring them to competition as well.

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Though there still is a big difference between the two, while the Pinecil does require a power cord, the M12 soldering iron can be pretty bulky in my experience, and also requires you to also have M12 chargers and batteries around. I’m sure it works for most applications, but honestly all boils down to personal preference in the end. I have also seen good things come from Ryobi’s portable battery powered station, i will note.

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Id recommend the Ryobi 18v soldering station for the same reason. It is a little bulky but still portable as it can be plugged in or use the 18v battery.

What I don’t like though is the temperature controller. It auto shuts off way too quickly for my personal preference even when plugged in directly. Maybe it’s an overheating feature or maybe it’s energy efficiency. Either way it sucks when you’re working and it stops being hot every 5 minutes unless you juggle the temperature dial around.

Is it good enough for FRC in most cases yeah, but we also have some at work and I might be halfway through a protoboard and it’ll shut off on me. Otherwise I love the thing and mainly because I can take it wherever.

My recommendation is just to not use a portable soldering iron. Heating an iron up wireless will take a lot longer than a wired one, but there are a lot better alternatives to having to solder something. If there are cut wires that need fixing try using solder splices that you can use a heat gun on. Or if you need to solder on a CAN coder do that in the pits of a comp and then put it on a robot. I just think there are a lot better alternatives to soldering in FRC. In 9/10 cases there are usually safer and more reliable alternatives. :slight_smile:

Keep in mind, however, that more teams have drill batteries than a dedicated portable battery and cable. That’s why I’m more willing to broadly recommend the M12.

Now, if you’re not too worried about the idea of “true wireless”, and have a little extra money to spare on a portable battery, by all means go for the Ryobi or Pinecil. It all changes team-by-team.

We have been over this time and time again on this site.

Soldering has its place. At an absolute minimum there are lots of breakout boards or sensors that may need to be soldered, often in tight spaces. Not everything is a wire that can take a wago lever lock connector.

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so this pinecil looks very cool but how does one power it? the barrel jack would be easy enough but I’m not sure I’ve seen any 12v usb C power supplies… if it accepted 5v would a phone battery pack work to power it for ultimate portableness?

edit: pine does have this PinePower - 120W Desktop Power Supply and it has a usb-C port that appears that it would work to power the pinecil but that seems awfully annoying to go power that in any portable manner. (also looks like a generally useful power supply might get it any way to go on my desk)

Any USB C PD supply or battery pack will work great. PD supplies will usually rate what voltage outputs they are capable of. I have a 65W PD supply I can use for a Pinecil or charging my laptop or phone.

ah good to know. I know almost nothing of the world of usb-C charging stuff. honestly that sounds very nice to have (if I had a laptop that did usb-C charging but ehh)

Got one of these Mellif Cordless Solder Iron this summer to help with some AIS antenna installs away from the shop. If you already have the Dewalt ecosystem it works well enough for most tasks.

Although Soldering is a simple “just do it and forget it” fix to a lot of things, there are a lot of ways to avoid having to do it at all. A lot of these instances like break-out boards, or sensors that may need to be soldered can be fixed by simply replacing the component entirely and having all of your sensors use locking crimps. I’ve been on Team 93 for 4 years and we haven’t had to solder a part or component in a Robot (at a comp) in that time and as far as I’m aware, we haven’t in at least the past 6 years.

Rather than soldering a breakout board at a comp, bringing a spare and hot-swapping them (in my experience) has been faster for us and made us a more reliable product in the end. Same thing goes for sensors. If you have a sensor mounted in a certain spot, removing the sensor, throwing in a new one, and using a JST, or Molex locking connector to plug and play a new one could help cut down on your time spent fixing things. In that case you wouldn’t have to worry about the time of getting an iron set-up, heated, cold solder joints, and heat shrink over it when you could get started on it right away and take off what’s faulty and throw in something that works.

Our team uses Molex locking connectors for 22-16 AWG wire that we can just grab-n-go with and works well for our purposes. It is also very nice not to worry about Soldering Iron safety measures at comps as well as simplicity.

Hope some of this can help :slight_smile: :slightly_smiling_face: :

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