Hi, I have a standard sildering iron. It has a tip that will do for soldering breadboard etc, but, I need to repair a mimi router which has a micro usb connector (female) and the tip is way to big. I have been googling and found various tip for sale such as


https://www.aliexpress.com/item/328...51-4fc1-bef6-1f1ac1a61cc5&transAbTest=ae803_4

But no amount of googleing can I find an illistration of the standards for soldering tip size. Can anyone advise?

 

hi jr,
Welcome to AAC.
Do have a model number for your solder iron, a makers number or some way of identifying the type, the bits come in all shapes and sizes.
E

 

Welcome to AAC.

You get what fits.

For soldering, you need a tip that will carry sufficient heat to heat the thing to be soldered to soldering temperature. Generally, the tip must be small enough not to heat other adjacent parts.

I use one tip for almost everything -- a short conical tip to a dull point. Long cones can get into smaller areas, but don't carry the heat. Blade tips are preferred by some, and my non-temp controlled 25W iron has one of those (about 3/32 wide). My 80W iron has a 1/4" blade.

Blades are good for moving solder around, e.g., dragging it, but for the fine pitch parts that I drag solder, my conical tip works fine.

 

I almost never use those tiny tips. As jpanhalt mentions, use a tip that can supply the heat. A lot of those small tips just make it harder to solder as it cannot transfer enough heat to the work.

 

Hello,

The tip size depends on what you want to solder.
As examples see the following RF cases:
The MAR has tiny tabs:



The MRF power mosfet has much larger tabs to solder:



Bertus

 

A lot depends on your skill and technique.
I generally use the same tip to solder through hole and SMT parts, and even PICs with 0.4mm pin spacing.
The most important thing is to be able to get controlled heat there quickly. Make sure you use a temperature controlled iron.
Here is one of many soldering videos, and note that the tip is quite large.

Stay away from those long pointy small tips as they will just discourage you.

Use the tips that have thick tapered parts to the end, not the skinny ones. More metal = better heat transfer.

 

For SMD work, I use a fine tip such as 0.015" or 0.031".

 

I generally only use a smaller to medium chisel tip and a large knife tip. If I only had one to choose from I would just get a medium chisel tip.

You would think it should be the opposite but similar to the video posted above I actually like to use the large knife tip for mcu's with many legs and the smaller chisel tip for something I'm touching up like a small eeprom or a small passive component. I have 2 irons set up so I can switch between them but mostly end up just using the knife tip.



Tips off ali do not usually hold up very well and cause more problems later on. I suggest buying decent quality tips.

 

Bigger is better but some time you need a smaller tip rare but needed
I back years ago needed to solder some cat hairs on a lcd a big tip just wouldn't do.
I had a old radio shack iron 25 watts that use a screw in tip it's about a inch long and 1/8 round
good old iron.
I know people will say not to do this but the tips was cheap back then and I had lots of spares.
I filed a old one down to just a bit smaller then the pads tin'd the tip with tip cleaner., Then solder
it last about 10 pads job done.
Only off side is the tip will not last long but for a simple repair it's a good thing just make sure you have
a spare for next job.