I think it’d be way more precise to have a soldering iron where the tip is close to your fingertips, just like a pen.
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They get real hot. Putting the hot thing so close to your fingertips would burn them. There are smaller soldering irons for precision work but there is just a limit to how close you can put the s(m)oldering hot tip to a person’s fingies.
> the tip is close to your fingertips
The tip is 280-360 degrees celsius. There are soldering irons that are a bit shorter than average and they already get a bit too warm for comfortable holding over a long session.
> it’d be way more precise
It’s already precise enough that you’ll literally need a soldering microscope before you need more soldering iron precision.
JBC makes soldering stations where the tip is pretty close to where you hold. They are also very expensive compared to normal soldering stations.
Those stations use a cartridge system, where you plug the tip into the holder, and the heater is around the tip, inside of the holder. But it is much simpler to just have a circular heating element poking out of the holder and the tip fastened around it, which makes it long.
It likely wouldn’t be more precise – our production hand soldering people can solder 0201 components with standard Weller or Metcal irons all day long with no problem.
It would, however, be very hard to insulate so it didn’t burn your hand while also keeping the tip hot enough.
TS100 soldering iron. I have one and is great for getting small places. Can also be powered by battery.
Really good solder work is primarily about two things:
1. **Get the heat right!** 90% of soldering is about getting the correct heat. When solder gets hot, it turns into a liquid. That liquid desperately wants to stick to metal that is hot. A solder tech can do a surprisingly good job just by getting the parts hot enough, smearing solder, on the work and wicking away the excess. You can’t get too hot though because that can destroy the components.
2. **Get the parts clean.** Solder sticks to bare metal, but normally there’s a layer of oxidization on parts. That oxidization will interfere with the flow of the solder. That’s where flux comes in. Flux helps the solder to flow, and it cleans off the oxidization layer so the solder can flow and bond properly.
There’s a lot more subtlety to to the work and it takes a huge amount of effort to master the art. Getting to an intermediate level at soldering doesn’t require as much precision as you’d think. The distance of the tip to the grip drastically improves safety and comfort, without any significant impact to quality.
The iron tips get to 600-800 degrees F. If you had a shorter tip the heating elements would be much closer to the handle and at those temperatures it’d be really hard to isolate the heat from the user’s hand even with the handle in the way. All of the handle materials would need to be much more temperature resistant and durable.
Or you just extend the tip so all of the heat is away from the hand. Cheaper and easier.
The end of a soldering iron gets really hot, so even the hot coming off it will burn your fingers if they are close. We could invent a glove that would protect you enough from the heat to let you hold it like a pencil without burning your fingers, while also being easy to wear, but no one has done it yet.
As others mention, the length is so you don’t burn your fingers. They’re hot. They’re also precise enough for the job.
If you don’t need that precision there are alternatives. Reflow soldering is what’s typically done for mass soldering. Basically solder is a paste put on the board, components are set in place by robots, and the thing is baked hot enough to melt the solder. As the video shows, you don’t need to be especially precise, the metal beads itself together exactly where it needs to go.
For a hobbyist if the project has extremely small soldering details a hot air works quite well. [This video showing it was the top hit on YouTube](https://youtu.be/Xcxp0ofb9OI?t=128). It can also work if you’ve got hand tremors or other inability to hold the parts how you need.
This is what has always bothered me when trying to learn to solder It feels like it would be a million times easier if I could just hold it near the tip. And considering how many other devices I’ve seen that are somehow like hundreds of degrees of heat inside of a plastic casing certainly there has to be some sort of insulation or something that can make this possible
I’ve seen like shitty toasters and toaster ovens made out of plastic I’ve seen like heat guns with plastic housings and stuff and they have little to no like extra nozzle or anything. Certainly there has to be a way to allow this device to heat up without needing like a huge fucking basically heat sink between me and the tip
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