After four years of solid use my soldering iron tip finally refused to accept anymore soldering. The tip just wouldn’t accept any solder on it so I thought I would have a go and repairing it as a new one would cost money!!.
I watched a couple of vids on electrolysis cleaning so decided to have a go.
Requirements.
- Dirty soldering iron tip.
- Water
- Salt
- PSU 12v 1A +
- Solder
- An hour or two
Be aware that a small amount of fumes(chlorine gas, hydrogen gas, and sodium hydroxide) will be generated by this process so take care to ventilate your working area. with an open window. I actually didn’t mind the faint smell of a swimming pool but thats just me. Just ventilate or extract the fumes if you have that option.
Put some water in a container. I used about 300ml of water and about three to four heaped teaspoons of salt. Warm water makes it easier to dissolve the salt so just stir for a bit until all dissolved.
Take your PSU and strip about 2 inch from the leads
Check which lead is negative and attached this to the soldering Iron tip.
I made a boo boo at this point as I just put the bare positive lead in the water. DONT do this as the positive copper end is disssovled as I found out.
As a test you can dip the leads in to ensure the bubbles are generated on the tip confirming the cleaning process is working.
Make sure to attach the posistive lead to a piece of solder and dip the solder in the water instead of the lead.
Ensure to keep the soldering tip and solder separated to avoid a short.
It may take an hour or two but keep checking on the process periodically especially that the solder remains submerged as it will dissolve and need repositioning.
The tip will look quite dirty but the residue just wipes off revealing a nice clean tip.
You can wip and lightly sand the tip then coil the cold tip with some solder and turn on the soldering iron.
This should coat/tin the tip. I repeated this process a couple of times and its now retaining solder.