> I have oftern thought of bringing one of my Weller tips to a jewler and
> having it platinum plated.  Anyone ever tried that?

You do not want to do that. Platinum is not wetted by solder and you'll
end up with very poor solderings. Same for other noble metals.

There is a kind of tip that is made of some sort of stainless steel that
is wetted by solder but does not corrode (even if abused a lot). This is
used in irons like Goot's (it's the 20W pencil kind that has a boost
button that makes it 200W temporarily - excellent for opening shield cases
and chassis soldering and such). I have one for occasional home use and
it's as good as new after 12 years. The tip is stainless with ceramic
sheath (very good insulation wrt the mains powered heater).

The trick with the copper tip is related to heat transfer. They used iron
plated copper tips for high heat transfer to the tip and good thermostat
control (copper is a very good heat conductor). If you solder delicate
things most of the time and your iron hasn't got a thermostat in the first
place then a tip made entirely of iron/stainless is probably better. Plus
you can resharpen it as you like (as another poster noted). This turns out
to be very useful because some special parts require special tip shapes
and buying them such made is not an option for amateurs ($$$).

At work I use Weller + Hakko. We once had someone demonstrate Metcal. We
concluded that we cannot justify the expense, it did nothing that the
Hakkos and the Wellers could do.

Peter

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