Hey Guys, ive been into soldering and know enough to get me into trouble as you could say and bought the TK-950 Soldering Station and this is the first unit ive had that uses a temp setting by degree's and was wondering what is a good temp to solder connectors on our esc/batteries when swapping over to the plug we use. My friends use me as the go-to guy for doin this and with lipos and life packs i want to try to be careful of getting them TOO HOT since i dont know what it will do to them and cant really afford to buy them a new pack if i do something but like to do this stuff so always willing to help out a friend....

Well, truth is, it's not so much the actual temperature, it's how FAST you can transfer that heat to the connection. The appropriate amount of heat really depends on how difficult something is to heat up. large or thick items tend to dissipate heat more easily, so you need more heat to deal with them, & for more delicate connections(like the little wires that go from the ESC & servo to the receiver), you need a little less temperature to keep from damaging the connectors or the wire insulation. If your iron has a good sized tip with alot of surface area, then you shouldn't have to worry about whether the iron's too hot, because with that surface area, you can heat things up fast enough to avoid damage(general rule, if you can do it in about 2 or 3 seconds, you should be ok)....

If you really want to do it the "right" way....read this thread http://www.rctech.net/forum/radio-el...ef-lesson.html. Everything is relative, so this may not be the way you want to do it. I've been in this hobby for decades and learned a lot from this thread, permanently changed the way I solder. If you have a little time it's worth the read.

I have basically the same soldering station (Checkpoint TC-950) and have many years of soldering under my belt. I use rosin core solder and pre-tin all connections. I pretty much keep my soldering station set at 750 and it works nice and fast. Most of my soldering is on 12 or 14 gauge wire. If I'm soldering small wires such as servo wire, I may drop the temp down to 600-650ish and use the small pencil tip. Have soldered hundreds of connectors and have yet to melt or distort one, and have never had one desolder itself. The more you do it, the better you get.

With Metcal soldering stations, I use 600F for small "pencil" tips, and 700F for the biggest "chisel" tip. This works great for 63/37 lead/tin solder. For lead-free solder, some may find a bit higher temps to work better, but I've used the above temp settings without issue.

Good temps for for lead based solder. Silver solder requires about 750 for quick, clean joints (or at least that's what works best for me). For tips, always use the largest tip available to you (within reason, you dont need a chisel tip to solder 22awg servo connectors) to ensure the best heat transfer and to minimize tempeature drop in the tip while soldering.

Keep in mind that with the Trakpower station (love mine), keep the temps below the 775-800 range to protect the tips. Above 775, the tips oxidize fairly quickly (the discolouration that occurs on the tips) which leads to poor performance and tip life.

Generally speaking, I use a chisel-shaped tip that is roughly similar in width to the wire diameter. With an iron set to the proper temperature, bigger tips usually result in faster joints (which is a good thing), but there is a point where larger tips just get too clumsy.

With 600F tips in my Metcal, I can literally leave a iron on all day long without oxidizing the tips. At 700F, tips will discolor slightly if left on for a couple hours; a quick swipe across a damp sponge and a bit of re-tinning will get them right back to proper condition. Too much hotter than that, and the tip is indeed at risk of permanent damage if left on for any length of time.