How To Change Soldering Iron Tips
The first thing of course is NOT to do this when the iron is hot.
How to change soldering iron tips. A regular soldering iron. Changing the soldering tips on a PES51 pencil is very simple. Start by turning off the soldering iron remove the iron and using a pair of pliers or some other kind of gripping tool to hold onto the hot metal parts clamp it down and unscrew.
Damaging your iron is not only possible but easy when replacing the tips so procede with care. The best tip tinner is your solder--tips should always be coated with a small amount of solder. How to clean and re tin your soldering iron - YouTube.
Your soldering iron expands and contracts when it heats and cools and an excessively tight locking nut can bind and make subsequent soldering iron tip changes. The large flat surface can hold more solder than most other tips and its helpful when soldering small-gauge wires together or dragging solder across surface-mount chips to solder multiple pins at once. Heat it up to around 350C and wait.
The solder melts and should stick at the tip. I normally replace my tips when it makes the solder feels gummy kinda hard to notice on big connectionsif your getting solder tails when you take your iron off the piece and your tip appears to be clean shiny then its time to replace. If you want to speed things up a little bit and do it safely theres another way.
Install the prepared tip in your soldering iron. Take your replacement soldering iron tip and fit it into the sleeve and slide it back on the heating element as it was before. Before soldering clean your tip with a clean cloth and some alcohol.
The tips transfer heat from the soldering iron to the insert softening the surrounding plastic to loosen the insert so it can be removed. I keep a 25mm half-chisel in one iron and a 15mm in the other for fine work. These are used to replace any damaged tips and each tip serves a different purpose.