Drag soldering - which spoon tip size to go for (JBC C245 series) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: BinaryBits
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2025, 04:27:04 pm
content: So i want to buy a JBC C245 spoon tip for drag soldering, but i don´t know which size to buy? There is the 1.9mm, 2.3mm, 2.7mm, and the 3.8mm, (well, the 3.8mm is out of the question for me).I was first thinking of the 1.9mm one (C245-965), but don´t know if it can hold enough solder? I want to be able to drag solder most IC´s.I have watched Youtube videos to see which spoon tip size people are using mostly, but its hard to see from a video.So you who uses spoon tips, which size are you using, and think is a good size spoon tip?Thanks in advance.

author: wasyoungonce
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 18, 2025, 11:33:15 pm
content: I don't use JBC, but Hakko and T12 I find the biggest tip you can fit is best. More thermal capacity, covers more legs and has more "pool capacity" of solder to do longer runs. Like a QFN144 i can solder half one side, 36 legs/2 = 18 legs, in one go using a 3.2mm drag tip.Smaller tip is not necessarily better. Heat always flows to the very tip i can easily remove a bridge on 2 legs with 3.2mm. Just ensure plenty of flux have iron tip at end of legs. Depending upon IC...2.3 to 2.7mm JBC spoon tips should be fine. Big ICs.....definitely a large tip. Yet I do 1 6pin SMDs with 3.2mm.Though many prefer a knife edge tips. Experiment, what ever works for you! Remember, you can never use too much flux (well kinda the adage more is better!)Clean tip and refresh solder every application or run.

author: shabaz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2025, 01:25:06 am
content: By coincidence, I have a video recording of that particular 1.9 mm tip that you mentioned (C245-965). Don't consider it as a guide; it's merely a recording of the first or second time that I ever attempted drag soldering so I could learn from what I was doing. There's no commentary, and it's uncut, so you can see all my mistakes.I learned I needed more flux for that style of soldering and that I was possibly being too cautious in filling the tip with solder when it came to reworking some of the pins. I also agree that a slightly bigger tip may be better, but I don't often drag solder (I don't mind slower per-pin soldering), so I think this is the only spoon tip I currently own. Ordinarily, I solder such ICs with a small tip and flux paste in a syringe, i.e., a slower process, I'm still not super-confident with drag-soldering, but I realize I need to practice it more when I get some time.The IC I was soldering had 56 pins (28 per side), 0.5 mm pitch.I used the blunt side of a flexible blade (scalpel blade) to test each pin was soldered down, since I didn't trust my first attempts at drag soldering).Anyway, as mentioned, don't use it as a guide to drag soldering, use it to see that particular tip; you'll find much better drag-soldering demonstrations elsewhere.Here are a couple of videos that I was recommended afterward.

author: BinaryBits
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2025, 03:48:56 pm
content: Thanks for your answers, and for the videos. It looks so easy, but i am sure its harder than it looks, until one learns it? I´m also a beginner at drag soldering, so it will be my first spoon tip. I have purchased some different kinds of tips, but feel that i also want a spoon tip in my "tip collection"I´m not so interested in knife tips, although many people seem to use those almost exclusively. I also read one can easily damage the board with knife tips?In the second video the guy was feeding the solder wire the whole time while he was drag soldering, shouldn´t it be enough with the solder inside the spoon, at least for one full row of pins?Maybe the 2.3mm tip is the sweet spot then? My go-to web store only has the 1.9mm and the 2.7mm in stock, and for some reason the 1.9mm is about 10 USD more expensive.

author: Shock
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2025, 11:46:08 pm
content: The first one was likely a flat faced bezel rather than a wave or hoof tip. If you cannot preload enough solder you can feed solder in as you work.This technique works with a variety of tips, each come with different nuances. The wave or hoof tips are just designed to easily hold a larger solder meniscus in place with greater surface tension.

author: shabaz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2025, 12:01:06 am
content: Quote from: BinaryBits on February 19, 2025, 03:48:56 pmEach video shows a slightly different scenario. My video shows a 0.5 mm pitch part, whereas video #2 shows a PLCC type part where the soldering tip face would have to be more perpendicular to the board rather than facing more down. And may well be a bevel tip rather than a spoon tip as @shock mentions.The third video shows a much larger QFP part compared to video #1.They are all different, you might need to experiment a bit unfortunately, but hopefully across the multiple video examples you've got enough information to make a reasonable decision to run with. If it doesn't work out good enough, you may need to try a different tip until you find what works for you.

author: BinaryBits
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 20, 2025, 10:18:57 am
content: Yeah, thats true, i will have to experiment a bit and see what works best. Thanks

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2025, 11:27:43 pm
content: Quote from: BinaryBits on February 18, 2025, 04:27:04 pmAt my old job, where we had JBC, my hands-down favorite of the spoon tips was the 2.3mm, C245067.

author: wasyoungonce
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2025, 01:04:33 am
content: Shabaz you did alright if that's first go....some pointers take them or leave them remember if it works for you...that's good enough:Yes I sometimes use blutak to hold an IC to do corner pins. Its sometimes a PITA if it meltsYou should have tacked corner pins and maybe one in centre. If the IC moves as you run one side without "tacking".....its "all buggered up bloody no good" (in pidgin English)If you get a leg bridge...apply more flux, refresh tip and hod tip (the very tip) on legs and wipe the tip parallel to pin outwards away. The solder follows the heat! It will mostly clear it and flow solder to the legsFor that many legs on a 1.9mm tip....I'd only go half way....refresh tip and flux and resume. Solder gets old real quickly oxidises doesn't flow as well Also the solder pool on a 1.9mm tip, IMHO, is insufficient to do that many pins AIO.Yes we all do more than one pass drag soldering....but do allow for cooling! I generally do last drag along the very tips of the legs on pads.I am struggling to find a method to clean SMD or LQFP (or other) IC legs that to me look "oxidised" somewhat. You know dull not shiny. ICs that may have been in storage. I am fiddling with silica gel and vacuum storage but alas its too long for some ICs. So I let the flux do this.....but part of me wants to somehow chemically clean the legs first. If anyone has suggestions....fire away!Over all...you done well! But you can never have enough flux

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2025, 02:19:42 am
content: I find the bluktak method shown here quite weird.My method would be:1. Apply flux, position IC roughly.2. Put some force on the IC, Either with some weight or some spring like contraption.3. Position the IC accurately.4. Solder some "random" pins (they can even be shorted) to fix the location.5. Verify location is correct.6. Drag solder the whole thing.The spoon does not have to hold much solder. Together with soldering some "random pins" in step 4). you can add roughly the amount of solder that is needed for a whole row. But I agree that a bigger tip is generally better, because it improves heat transfer. What about starting with some cheap chinese tips, buy at least two different sizes and try them out. If they wear out quickly, then buy a real JBC tip, but then you know which size you want. Things like this are also dependent on the person who's soldering. There is no magic size that work best for everybody.Temperature of a chinese tip may be a bit off. You can easily calibrate the temperature by applying some solder to the tip and let the tip cool. Then slowly increase the temperature until the solder starts melting. If you do this with both a JBC and a Chinese tip, then you know how if there is any difference, and how big that difference is.

author: shabaz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2025, 05:18:54 am
content: Thanks for the feedback, it's encouraged me to try drag soldering again at some point (with a slightly larger tip).Although drag soldering can be quicker and has a cleaner finish, I can work at reasonable speed and precision with a C210 tip, so have not had a chance to try drag soldering much (and now that I use QFN a bit more, the need has dissipated further, I use hot air for QFN).(Incidentally if the OP is also considering JBC handles (since they are compatible with the station) a T210 with a fine tip makes many things child's play (literally; the attached photo shows a SOIC part being soldered by my 8-year-old nephew; it was a Chinese radio kit, not a bad project for children, with supervised soldering).I use several techniques to hold down a part, and do use the corner-tacking method too. Blu-Tack is excellent for securing through-hole parts and wires.With the finer pitch ICs (TSSOP and 0.4 mm pitch), I find I want to spend a lot of time aligning the part and then visually look all around all sides before soldering, and a couple of techniques that work well for me are either Blu-Tack (because I can just keep nudging until it's just right), or narrow Kapton tape (hold a length of it in both hands, allow the IC to attach to the center, and then you can hover it over the board without tweezers or fingers or anything else obstructing the view, before taping it down (and then tack a couple of pins and lift off the tape).

author: BinaryBits
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2025, 09:27:39 am
content: About the T210 handle, i am not sure if it works with my JBC unit, i have the compact version with color screen. JBC is not mentioning anywhere on their website if the T210 handle works with my unit?But I actually tried a clone T210 handle with a clone C210 tip on my unit, but it was unusable, the temperature went up and down erratically within a 40 degree Celsius span, but that might have been due to the tip and handle being clones?Although the same clone C210 tip works perfectly fine with my Sequre S60P USB iron.Also, it seems the C210 tips are even more expensive than the C245 tips?For small stuff i use the smallest C245 chisel tip available (C245-731), which has a 0.6mm width, but i feel some IC pins might need an even finer tip, maybe the C245-030 which is 0.3mm (although i normally don´t like conical tips)?Yeah i had the idea to maybe try a couple of different spoon tip sizes from China. But the clone spoon tips are like 3 times more expensive even from China, than the more common C245 clone tips. Of course they are still cheaper than the original ones.

author: shabaz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2025, 03:17:06 pm
content: Hi,I've not noticed that the C210 tips have any price discrepancy; they seem similar-priced to the C245 tips; it may be worth trying a different reseller just in case there's a better offer elsewhere.Regarding compatibility, the T210 handle does fit the JBC stations intended for T245, even if that information is not easy to spot sometimes from the websites.FWIW, I end up using C210006 a lot (it's the one in that photo a couple of posts up); it's a 1 mm bevel, and I find it useful for SMD as well as through-hole (granted, it's not an optimal tip size for larger through-hole, but the small tip pumps out heat energy very well, and it's usually a breeze to solder even relatively large joints with it (I'm only prototyping, not doing production work where requirements are tighter). I end up using that tip and T210 handle more than the T245 (but the T245 is essential, since there will be much larger joints, large connectors etc that will require it; so if you're just going for one general-purpose handle, then T245 is the ideal choice). For a conical tip, the bent-conical may be better for you if you struggle with straight conical (I find straight conical unusable, I just have not used them all that much).The handles are actually surprisingly affordable from JBC (compared to some other soldering station manufacturers), so there's little incentive to use a clone handle on a genuine JBC station. Personally I use genuine tips (and solder, flux etc from a reputable local supplier).