What watt? solder iron for SMD conversion?

[ChrisBilly]

As title, can anyone tell me which the best wattage soldering iron is to use on dash smds? I've got the smds for the clocks, stereo and heater controls ready to be done.
I did the int. light assy buttons with blue and white but the white ones look pale yellow, not much of an improvement. I think i'll just do the steering wheel controls all blue.
Cheers Bill

[ChrisBilly]

bump

[kman247]

You need a temperature controlled one , one that doesnt adjust is going to cause you problems , if not now in the future.

[ChrisBilly]

Cheers kman. I dont want to fluff it up and cook anything. The irons i've got are not suitable, ones almost antique and the other is a small gas one. So with a temperature control iron what temp is best?
Cheers Bill

[kman247]

Thats the thing , for different things different temperatures , when I do a conversion I probably change the temperature 10-15 times depending on what I am working on.

[Aikon58]

I use a 15 watt soldering iron myself for smd's,not had a problem with it because of heat saturation either,i changed the colour to blue in my ncdr1100 head unit when i had it,and they are not so common to find,so if it burnt out the pcb i would have been knackered,lol

[Birchy63]

It's not clear cut unfortunately.....

You need a temp regulated iron with the highest wattage possible.

The reason for this is because when you apply heat to a component or PCB it drains heat from the iron, the larger the component/PCB the more quickly it drains, this can make melting solder almost impossible until the whole device has heated..... But the problem here is that your putting over 200 degree's (typically 250+) into a component that shouldn't be heated this much.

A high wattage iron won't loose much heat to dissipation (because it will compensate more quickly) and you'll be able to melt the solder before transferring too much heat into the part.