A good soldering station can be a big investment. The biggest drawback from a $20 soldering iron is that the tip temperature is not regulated. An inexpensive iron is simply a heating element that is connected to power, the issue with this is that you ideally would like to solder different types of components at different temperatures, and those temperatures should stay consistent. Many people hook up their cheap irons to a light dimmer to get a bit of control over the device, and this is fine but if you are soldering something that wicks lots of heat away from your tip the dip in temperature and recovery time might be unacceptable. To combat this issue proper temperature controlled soldering irons have temperature sensors that measure the temperature and vary the power applied to the heating element to keep a constant temperature.
Giorgos Lazaridis from PCB Heaven has made a nice DIY Temperature controlled Soldering Station, the unit was built nice and inexpensively and it uses some recycled parts in the construction which is always nice to see.
“The idea was simple, yet the implementation according to the standards that i had set was much harder to follow as i originally thought. I will use a 30 Watt soldering iron for the job. Somehow, i will measure the temperature as close to the tip as possible. For temperature sensor, i will use a K-type thermocouple pair. I have a complete theory for thermocouples that you may be interested to read. A controller circuit will read the temperature. A potentiometer will be used to set the requested temperature, according to which the controller will turn on or off the soldering iron heater.”
