I’ve always thought I was bad at soldering. An annoying necessity for modding things. At least, that’s what I thought.

The Iron

I’ve had my Iron for a long time. And I’ve modded a fair number of consoles using it.

While RGB modding my flippers, I found my iron not really keeping up, when it logically should. Melting the two big joints took forever (even with the iron set to 777F). But that wasn’t the biggest issue. I also had to solder some tiny mod wire, to some tiny pads.

Getting the solder to stick was a massive pain. And with everything being so small, that made it pretty frustrating. Yeah I’ve never been great with soldering, but this didn’t seem right.

After finishing the mod, I had a thought. What if it’s not me. Yeah, those small pads could have been me. But, the large joints had to be the iron…

Better Tools

With an overnight Amazon order, I had a new iron.

I picked up a Pinecil v2, as I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and it was in my “why the hell not” price point.

This thing is a little crazy. Not only is it thin, and USB-C powered. It also has a 144MHz 32-bit RISCv CPU. Yes, a RSCv CPU, running IronOS.

Those fancy specs allow it to do fancy things. Better temperature monitoring, power boost mode, motion activated sleep, and more. The boost temperature and sleep behavior can also be changed in the settings, without a computer.

Comparing The Two

I’m convinced that my old iron was lying to me. It would say that it was at 700F, but could barely heat up copper braid. The Pinecil was heating the braid with no issues, at 600F.

The Pinecil was also getting to working temperature quicker. I tested this by having some solder in the tip while cold, then I turned on the irons, and timed them until the solder melted.

Flipping the old iron on, its display quickly counted up to my set temp, 700F. Despite counting up quickly, it took 30s to melt the solder. The Pinecil took only 13s.

That’s cool and all, but how is it at actually soldering.

It Wasn’t Me

Breaking out a solder kit I’ve had for a bit, I got to assembling it. With a mix of large and tiny pads, it was a pretty good test of the iron. Half way though, it hit me. I’m not bad at soldering.

All of the joints were flowing with ease. Even the tiny ones. Everything felt effortless. I didn’t suck at this. My old Iron did.