Battery powered soldering iron review
I purchased a battery powered soldering iron last time I was in Japan. I wanted something small that would fit in my electronics kit bag and that could be taken on a plane (ruling out gas powered irons, which are generally more effective).
I bought a Engineer Inc “Kotenosuke SKB-01”. It takes 3 AA batteries. I finally tried it out for an extended soldering session last night.
To switch the soldering iron on you need to both move the switch to the on position and keep the button depressed. As such the soldering iron is only actually on when your holding it, as so as you put it down it switches itself off.
The iron takes about 10 seconds to heat up, which is pretty good, but to be honest even that 10 seconds can get annoying if you’re constantly picking it up and putting it down (as it turns itself off). The batteries last a good few hours, enough for an evening soldering I would guess.
One advantage of the “press to activate” button is that you can remove heat before you remove the iron. That means if you’ve got something particularly springy to solder you can apply a little pressure with the iron while soldering and allow to contact to set before removing the iron.
The top itself is quite strong, and fine enough for most microelectronics work. It’s interchangeable but I’ve not investigated purchasing replacement tips yet.
All in all, I’d say it’s a useful tool but probably not a replacement for a mains powered iron of course, in particular having to constantly wait for the iron to heat up, lack of temperature control etc. is annoying.
Below is some soldering I did with the iron, I used the narrowest gauge solder I could find. It’s not so pretty but it did the job:
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