Inside the cheapest soldering iron on ebay. 

Ah, come on, it's broken but it's very easy to fix: just take your soldering iron and... nevermind.

The "quick release" power cable is a safety feature ;-)

Wow, that's a lot of metal and assembly for $1 :) Given the cost constraints, I'm pretty impressed by the build quality.

they didnt solder them wires on because they dont even trust using their own soldering irons to do the job .

I live in Thailand and bought one of these yesterday as an emergency soldering iron. It cost me 20 Baht or about $ .60 US from a 20Baht store (similar to a $1.00 Store). The first thing I did was measure the wattage and my unit showed 31 watts versus the sticker that said 40 Watts. Here in Thailand we run on 220 volts AC. The iron actually works fairly well, heating up time as expected is long but it does solder. This is no substitute to a soldering station but in a pinch will do the job.

i want this guy to read me stories every night

As an adolescent I bought such a cheap soldering iron from the bargain bin at the local hardware store. I lasted less than an hour before the heating element burned out. The store proprietor was kind enough to give me a replacement, but it didn't fare any better. Since then, I've preferred Weller industrial soldering stations. Repair parts are readily available and they hold up for hundreds to thousands of hours of use.

The mind boggles! Thanks for the video Clive, you got a really nice mention the other day on aVe.

I took a cheep 4$ harbor freight soldering iron and replaced the tip with solid copper wire (AWG 6 I think) and plugged it into a dimmer got decent results.

Very few of the cheaper soldering irons in the US have an earth/ground.

I once buy a one dollar soldering iron and once I turned it on, the plastic handle melts... LOL

Define irony, a soldering iron that contains cables are not soldered. Great videos, love your presentation. Keep up the great work.

Thank you for this video, Clive.

I swear if i had the money i would buy this guy everything he need to take his quality to the next level.. Editing PC, lighting, mics, cameras, etc! Man, you have a VERY unique channel! Gold play button incoming!

That looks even worse than the crappy soldering irons they sell in Homebase, probably doesn't even last any more than 5 minutes. None of the ones I got ever did.

im not sure how i ended here but i have the same one i bought from ebay and have used it on and off for 3 years now and wirks well

I had gotten a trisonic brand soldering iron from a dollar store near me, much like the design of this one. The mica foil got everywhere. I added this videos link in the teardown video of my iron. Keep doing these vids, I feel things like this should be exposed for there lack of care and quality.

I bet this would TIG your connections real good.

It only costs you your life!

I recently purchased the cheapest 60 watt iron I could find on Ebay. It shares the same plug as yours without "holes" in the tips for hot and neutral. Also, the plastic handle gets hot. But it does work. The Harbor Freight irons are only 30 watt, but they are also pretty good.

This is the best most honest RU-vidr out there +bigclivedotcom

This is actually sold on every popular malls on my country.

I bought one for fun too, it's still the cheapect one in 2021 at less than £3 to your door, the heating element for this generic 30w iron is £1 on it's own and it fits a few different el-cheapos. The screw in the handle hilt gets bloody hot but I worked round it by putting a different one in it and then adding strain relief and a new better and longer cable, no earth but I used it for a day or two, also The metal part that holds the tip is sheet steel and curved to fit and within a day it had opened up, strange how you HAVE to mod Chinese crap like this just to get it a bit safer to use, great video Clive.

wow love that enormous meter display

I have an identical looking one in blue, in which the wire was indeed zigzagged around the strain relief thing as you thought it should be. Also the wire is crimped on to on terminals attached to the black plastic piece and heat-shrunk. Gotten that nearly 15 years ago in a dollar store like thing in France, served me well until I gotten a proper thing recently.

I'm using the soldering iron for about 1 year and it works excellent

The bits are interesting. I'm used to lovely Weller soldering iron bits (copper core, iron coated, plated, tinned, etc.) These cheap irons come with effectively a nail which corrodes *really* fast.

I have that exact solder. It cost around 0.80 USD, and i use it to replace a microswitch in my mouse, which was double clicking. It's not bad, and it's still running ok. I use this to fix loose soldering, basic repair and such.

Take it to bits! Never heard that one before, I like it

This looks better at first than the one I got in the mid 2017 from eBay for $2, was soldering and the wires came out just like this but they had put one tiny spot of solder on the very thin tip of the wires no stripped wires etc

Following your glowing review I got myself one of these! I was impressed with the build quality and mine had the special feature where the handle & soldering iron end would wiggle when pressure was applied. Undeterred I plugged it in, it started oozing smoke from two of the holes on the metal body. One hole was a steady flow of toxicity while the other was just a half hearted attempt which wouldn't score higher than a 3 from an olympic judge. After about three minutes I measured the temperature of the tip with my thermal probe - an impressive 280 degrees and rising slowly. So I thought time to attempt some actual soldering/desoldering. I hovered my smoking tool over an old motherboard and touched the tip to the grounding tabs of the usb socket assembly and pressed firmly to compensate for the built in wiggle feature. I waited and after about ten seconds I could see the surface of the solder changing colour with and the iron also ceased smoking - Hurrah I thought! But then nothing else happened, so I pressed harder, waited, still nothing. Then I moved the tip to a smaller solder joint, pressed and waited - nothing. I decided to do my unique soldering iron tip temperature test where I move closer the tip end of the soldering iron body parallel to my lips to gauge a rough idea of the temperature - not very hot was the response from my lips! I applied my thermal probe to the tip and it stated 87 degrees and falling. After unplugging, waiting and trying again, it seemed like my wiggly wobbly Chinese soldering iron had gone to 99p heaven. So to conclude, I had enjoyed a ten minute mini toxic smoke-display and almost managed to melt a solder joint (to be fair it was a bigun) with my 3D direction adjustable body soldering iron before it expired. :-( On the plus side my mains lead seems to be firmly attached!

I might retire my fx951 and invest in one of these lil beautiful beasts!

I've used these a thousand times and have never had a problem other than the tips corroding really fast with daily use. The ones here in the States are $1 and have a black handle. Rated at 30w/110v

Ive always admired your screw driver!

I bought a vaguely better 60 watt soldering iron from Banggood, it too wasn't earthed. It's an easy enough job to do an earth though. Thanks for these reviews, they are helpful to us occasional hobbyists when we choose tools to use. 👍🏼👍🏼

I bought one here in America for $1.00 at a dollar store. It's built the same way as this one here, it takes about 2-3 minutes to heat up enough to melt solder and I use it as my go to when I'm doing desolder Work. So far it's worked well.

I love the fact that the wires are twisted together inside the metal bits... And.... the other end leads to an unfused plug...

I picked up an iron similar to this, the handle looked a bit nicer though and it was £4. I got it as a challenge. I had to use it to build a power supply from scratch, then build a soldering station using a wacky knock off 908 handle then use that to make a full blown re-work station. A 3 in One using an old computer case. It was a fun project though I will never ever ever use a cheap iron again. Having seen the inside of that one now, I am really glad I didn't open mine up.

Makes the cheapest one from Harbor Freight Tools seem legit.

Here in the USA, simple things like soldering irons are almost never grounded(earthed). Even electric hair dryers and vacuum cleaners are rarely grounded. When I ordered a British made Antex XS25 soldering iron(which I might add blows my old Weller out of the water) I was very surprised to get a three-prong plug. It is in my opinion more of an inconvenience as half my house is outfitted with un-grounded two-prong outlets. Only the kitchen circuits were retrofitted as they see high usage.

in around 90 or early 2000, in Indonesia, so many soldering iron's model like this. But the filament made not like that (in this video), still more secure. But when i bought the similar one around 2011, and want to join my components, i got electric shocked !!! I opened like you did and whoala... similar like in this video. both of them, same China made but the last one more cheaper. Around 90s it cost about 20 dollar but now only 5-6 dollar. Cheap and everyone who bought this also price theirself so cheap for safety.

I had pretty much the same happen to this cheap "desoldering tools" (your normal plunger solder sucker + a hollow heated tip). The wires were just losely twisted together and i think I may get 4 or 5 more uses out of it before it melts itself.

Don't forget some of us use them for things like model railways and models generally, and the earth is not so important. I keep cheap ones as backups, and have about 10 types of irons! I nearly always swap the tip for one made from phosphor bronze rod, they wear, but retain the tinning. Asl these cheap irons are good on dimmers to give a low temperature iron, for 145c solder and sub 100c solder like woods alloy. Stephen.

Interesting video, but I think you missed a trick there Clive.... element to metal housing resistance. That would have been my first test. Keep em coming!

I have had more of the same cheap soldering iron. On them was 25W / 220V but I used each of them only once because the heater immediately burned. I tried to connect a diode in series to reduce the voltage to the heater but did not help. I tried and transformer 220/110 but that did not help too. Fortunately they were cheap and still keep one piece.

seeing you touch the metal fills me with dread every time because I expect to get burnt

I have one of these, only mine slightly melts the plastic and the heating element not only burns electronics but also sends electricity through it. I can't wait to get a new better one

The cheapest soldering iron I ever took to bits didn't even have as substantial of a handle as this, but it actually had a ceramic heater and a pair of binding posts for the wires...

Good video and like most I've looked at these solder irons and thought .... I would never buy one of those ... but then I think they may have a good usage to say for example make solders on cables, join connectors and the like. In those situations we do not need the latest and greatest thermal controlled solder station. We actually may save some money by not deteriorating the our more expensive solder stations tips that cost Way more then this cheap iron :)

Bought a cheap iron myself. Probably should serve as a heads-up to people about cheap irons. Mine had a ground pin on the plug, but when I opened the plug, the ground pin wasn't actually connected to anything; horrible. Inside the plug was also a 13A fuse. A 13A fuse on a 40W device... scary stuff.

I sometimes watch these videos just to hear a Scottish guy complaining. RIP Grandpa.

Interesting video. But for 99p, its not going to be the best quality in the world. Also I think these cheaper irons would be much safer on 12 volts than 240v as if those wires come off like they did in this video. Having 240v up ones arm isn't going to be pretty.

I have one rewired with earth for resoldering a new heating element onto a soldering station handle and it worked.

I had one just out of interest, the thing only lasted a few minutes as the plastic holding the heating element melted and it fell apart. Thank you for exposing these dangerous electrical devices your doing a good service to many people.

I bought one of these a few months back, it seemed to work fine at first, but then the handle started to melt, and it was glowing red hot inside.

I'm surprised you haven't taken one of these apart before. It is standard practice to avoid soldering heating filaments, heat can melt/evaporate/oxidise lead which is no good electrically or health wise, lack of fibreglass sleeves on the joints is however an issue. The mica is plastic like because it's coated with wax (usually paraffin), it makes the mica workable and less fragile, on first heating wax will evaporate, hence often these kind of heaters do smoke a bit on the first run. Mica also does not deteriorate under

0:43 Look, the eBay ad picture even shows the wires broken off. lol!

We used to use this exact model at my school, i had no idea they were so cheap.

I have a friend that bought one of these and it works pretty good. I wouldn't use such a piece of junk nowdays but this is the kind of style of soldering irons that I started with... I tried to rewind one of these to make it work on a 3.7V 18650 cell but have any succes with it so I gave up.

Hey Clive, found your vids recently and I'm really enjoying them. I live in Switzerland and relative frequently travel to the UK, but have always been too cheap/lazy to buy enough adapters, so have always just shoved the swiss two-prong plugs (edit: euro-plugs) into the British sockets after pushing something thin and non-conductive into the earth to disable those little safety blockers (while the socket is off and removing it once the plug is in, of course). I have never had any problems with this, but have been wondering if it safe to do or not. (Of course it isn't "safe", but is it safe enough?)

Huh, it is strange how often I find stuff on your channel that I have at home :) I have the same soldering iron, but blue. Never used it. Now I'm pretty sure It'll go in the dustbin. Regards from Bulgaria :)

You make very interesting videos

I had the same iron,got very hot, hot enough for the tip to glow purple,but id didn't live a long life,and yes, the wire generally breaks with a huge spark or the element

I've seen soldering irons in a dollar store. It wasn't a chain but an independent one. I was really surprised because for a dollar something like that didn't sound very safe.

I'm glad you did this, because I have a question. A friend of mine got a desolderring pump that looks similar to this but it is for 220 volts. Is it possible to convert it to 100??

Interesting you talk about the grounded tip, I have only seen 1 iron like that and it was a very specialty one my late Grandfather had...everything I have seen for sale is just 2-prong.

O.o The cheapest (

Clive, the power cord pulled out with little or no effort. I would have no expectation, none at all. Holy shit, just as well the power cable pulled out, it saved the day. That "iron" wasn't fit to be powered up in the first place. Now it can all go in the bin, where it belongs.

1 Ebay seller has sold 700 of these kits for 9.88$ with free shipping. I bought one a couple weeks ago and it works fine. Only issue is that it comes unplugged easily. I would recommend spending double and getting a better kit if you are going to use it more than once ever few years.

Dave (EEVblog) had the same one (but a blue handle) in his latest mailbag. Needless to say, his reactions were amusing. ;)

I bought something similar once for like £3. I plugged it in, It sparked and burst into flames. Money well spent ^^

Bog standard heating element, made the same way in many applications. Bet the mandrel is steel as well, not thermally conductive copper. No earth means they save on the more expensive 3 plated steel core cable and extra plastic in the sheath and moulded plug. Have used similar unearthed ones for many years for non critical applications where you need to solder a few wires, and there is no need to pull out the big soldering gun.

I brought the same iron out of curiosity and for giggles. How they manage to make, ship and make a profit on that is bewildering to me. It was dead on arrival, I didn't bother taking it apart.

Grounding isn't common on soldering irons, at least not in my part of the world. None of the old Radio Shack irons my dad had (nor a newer one I bought from its successor store) were grounded. I have a big 80W Weller that isn't grounded either, although that one isn't meant for electronics (stained glass, electrical, and maybe plumbing). On the other hand, both my WP25 iron and WESD51 station are grounded. It makes a lot of sense the way you've explained it, but I never thought of it as a safety thing until now, only in the context of ESD.

This looks like one made for 100-120v at 60hz. USA does not require grounding on everything. This would explain the lack of grounding and the US style plug. I have seen a ton of ungrounded radio shack branded ones.

Reminds me of a 12v soldering iron I have somewhere, same cable and all except the plug was a cigar lighter socket plug... Yeah, not a great construction, but the mica sounded fun, I like Mica, it's a weird but very useful material (my Aladdin 37 Blue Flame paraffin heater uses clear mica for a window)... :)

i have one that has a blue handle with the exact same design for rm 2(0.36british pounds) and it worked fine.I used it to solder wires to a motor.

now you need to tell us whats the best size solder to use as there are so many .also like to say I love the vid with the clock kit made me send for one to try.

I know nothing about electronics, so common sense tells me to stay away from 99p soldering irons on eBay. Unfortunately not everyone thinks like me and many people would go for the "bargain", I do hope they see this video first. Of course there’s plenty to laugh at and some of the comments are brilliant, but there’s a damn good chance you might have saved a life here. eBay has to start taking some responsibility for the unsafe shit they allow people to sell, because let’s face it some people just aren’t capable of taking responsibility for themselves. Brilliant video, very well done posting it.

Actuallly has one of these, 60w performs strangely good.

WOW what a SCARY soldering pencil !!!

I have one exactly like that, it melted itself in about 15 minutes and looks funny now. Works pretty well though for generic soldering. Just be quick!

I have bought 2, seems easy enough to replace power cable and earth it yourself

do you have video about the expensive one? i would love to watch it. really help me to learning what's the diffrence. and thank you for this and the other video.

I have the same one and it really is cheap like 1 to 2 USD, but it works, so i modified it and used my glue gun wire ( Has 2 insulation so it's safe to touch and upon reconnecting, i used heatshrink rather than an electrical tape which is whats used in the iron, also i added a 3A 250V switch on the wire, I'm using it now with no problem. The cheap soldering iron itself is dangerous so modify it safely at no ones risk, stay safe.

The resistance of metal wires actually goes up when they heat up. That iron is nowhere near the claimed 40 W. The TCR of nichrome (typical heating wire) is about 400 ppm/K. Heating it up to about 400°C would increase the the resistance by 160000 ppm which is 16%. That 1.898 kΩ would then be 2.20 kΩ at temperature, so the actual power is 230²/2.20 kΩ = 24 W.

I had a similar one, that had an earth and it was great for a day or two.

I use a 12V soldering iron for printed circuit boards and an old computer power supply or an old halogen lamp transformer as power supply for it.

I was shocked when a friend told me this is the best soldering gun he has been using for last 30 years without any trouble and he bought it for about 50 cents. So we bought some and they all work very good... perfect, only issue is no earth....I am actually looking for a gun that load or store all solder, flux in it so that I could fire on joints with single hands easily.

Had the same thing, broke really fast, got it for 2-3$ I mean what can you expect at that price, but now I got a more expensive one, came with warranty, should've done that in the first place and save me some time lol. Lesson learned.

Nice screwdriver, i got that too, poundland is epic.

I have one of these pieces of crap, and as a matter of fact, I've gone through quite a few of them. It does have stress relief but it's not grounded. Inside, it's built similarly to this one, the wires are just twisted together. Had to get one since no local stores in my city sell soldering stations and I didn't have the time to take a five hour trip to the capital city just to buy one. So far it hasn't failed me, and I haven't damaged any electronic components yet due to the lack of earthing, but it's still pretty bad. As for the old ones, let's just say the tip eventually broke. It literally snapped.

When you opened it I immediately thought "Looks like they used a 99p iron to solder the other irons' wires!"- canna believe they were just twisted together, it's so bad it's great 😂😂😂

A soldering iron with no soldering in it, brilliant.

I had a iron which looked the same except blue I got from eBay, it worked fine for a couple of things like replacing a voltage regulator on my ZX Spectrum but then all of a sudden next time it wouldn't heat up anymore, probably the insulation breaking down or a short, I wouldn't know exactly but a friend who works at a shop which repairs and sells electronics and takes in stuff for recycling got me a Weller iron for free that he found in one of the recycling bins, any of you out there I'd definitely pay for something better than these eBay ones! I wouldn't know how good the higher priced eBay ones are but if you're going to pay more just get something decent unless you're only ever using it 2-3 times.

Very similar (identical heating element) construction as I have seen on many cheaper irons.

soldering irons generally use insulated nichrome/possibly kanthol right? do you know if there is a decent source of insulated heating wire?

I took my cheap Chinese glue gun apart, it had the same weird plastic like heating elements wrapped by nicrome wire. Most of the world, not the UK, don´t use a ground wire at all, it is done through the neutral mains wire and the electrical pole in the street provide the earth connection, more economical that way. Even if this iron was to short out it would melt and break apart the thin nicrome wire inside long before that thick insulated plastic handle would even begin to get warm.

still using my trusty inherited from grandad ex ministry of defence Adcola iron dated 1960!!

I paid well over $100 CAD for my Weller. I do love it, but part of me wonders if it would have just been more worth it to buy a few cheap ones like this and build my own controller + mods/improvements.