"Howard Winter" writes:
>Yes, I bought one just to see what it was like.  The "tip" is actially a pair 
>of pieces with a gap in the 
>middle, and it almost seems to use the target to bridge of the gap.  You often
> get a small spark as you press 
>the button (they tell you that's normal) and this, combined with not-very-smal
>l tip size means that I don't 
>think it's suitable for electronics.  I certainly won't be using it on anythin
>g with semiconductors in it!  

Ben Hencke writes:
>I also have one of these. The gap is huge! possibly 1/10th of an inch
>or more, making it uselss for soldering most stuff, even through hole.

	Thanks to both of you!  I seem to remember the iron is around
$20 or so which does not make it a major purchase in the over all
scheme of life, but if I bought it with the idea of soldering
component leads on through-hole perforated board which is what most
of my electronic projects are built around, and discovered what both
of you described, I would be annoyed.  It isn't a good deal if it
doesn't do what you bought it for.

	I can also imagine what it could do to a PIC or any
other solid-state electronics if the two halves of the tip fed the
roughly 6-volt power in to the circuit rather than shorting through
the target and solder.  It wouldn't be pretty.

	Howard Winter also mentioned the problem of orienting the tip.
If everything else was perfect and this was a must-have tool, I could
probably mark the correct spot, but there are too many gotcha's.  If
I were designing such a tool, I would give it a setup mode in which a
Sonalert module could be switched in series with the tip to whistle
when contact was made.  Then one would know that it was ready to go.

	Again, thanks for saving me time and money.:-)

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
OSU Information Technology Division Network Operations Group
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