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rogerdw
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Joined: 22/10/2019
Location: Australia
Posts: 895

Posted: 10:05am 24 May 2025

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I've been an electronics tech for over 50 years and in that time have emptied my solder suckers in the bin quite a few thousand times.

A couple years ago I had to solder up the petrol tank on my Honda generator and used a lot of solder. Anyway, in the process I wondered just how much solder waste I tip in the bin ... so from then on I just emptied it into a plastic spraycan lid.

Since then I filled two of them and because I have a plumbing type job coming up, yesterday I melted it all down. There was lots of rubbish in it but it seperated very well and looks quite useful to me.

It ended up being 4 inches in diameter and weighs 550 grams! I hate to think just how much I have wasted in 50 years.

Edited 2025-05-24 20:07 by rogerdw

Cheers, Roger

Godoh
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Joined: 26/09/2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 515

Posted: 01:28am 25 May 2025

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Wow Roger that is a serious amount of solder you have saved. That sounds like a great way to save materials as well as save money.
Well done
I have a solder sucker but it is a cheapy and I find solder braid does a better job than my cheap solder sucker. So reusing the solder is not so easy

Pete

oreo

Senior Member

Joined: 11/12/2020
Location: Canada
Posts: 109

Posted: 01:49am 25 May 2025

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In typical fashion, when I first read this I gleaned that you had discarded 550g in the last 50 years (11gm/yr). That didn't seem like much. After Pete posted I realized I had misread things. Yes, I too am probably wasting lots of solder, not to mention copper wire. I do save the thicker bits of wire, but I tend to throw out most of the thinner unstripped stuff.

Greg

rogerdw
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Joined: 22/10/2019
Location: Australia
Posts: 895

Posted: 03:33am 25 May 2025

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Godoh said Wow Roger that is a serious amount of solder you have saved. That sounds like a great way to save materials as well as save money.
Well done
I have a solder sucker but it is a cheapy and I find solder braid does a better job than my cheap solder sucker. So reusing the solder is not so easy

Pete

Thanks Pete. I was lucky early on and was given a SoldaPullt or something like that ... and it was great, worked well.

I tried all sorts of smaller cheapies over the years but could never get them to work, so always went back to the original until it wore out. When I discovered they were still being made, I've bought a few since as I wear them out or break them.

Not cheap, around $55 ... but well worth the money. I don't use a lot of solder wick because the sucker does most of the jobs ... but still go through a bit more nowadays cleaning up when replacing smd parts.

I have a cheapie desoldering station too but it's not worth the hassle and the time to clean it out 10 times per job and replace filters etc. Teach me for being a cheapskate.

https://au.element14.com/edsyn/ss350/desoldering-gun/dp/844410

oreo said In typical fashion, when I first read this I gleaned that you had discarded 550g in the last 50 years (11gm/yr). That didn't seem like much. After Pete posted I realized I had misread things. Yes, I too am probably wasting lots of solder, not to mention copper wire. I do save the thicker bits of wire, but I tend to throw out most of the thinner unstripped stuff.

Haha yeah, if it was 50 years worth it wouldn't be worth the hassle for sure, but I'm glad I've done the exercise ... and not that I'm fanatical about it, a lot still ends up on the floor and is swept away.

When it comes to wire, I'm always looking for short bits of copper wire in my repairs ... so for the same time I've been saving some of the pigtails from components. I've filled one plastic lid so far and that is more than enough to fish through and find the right thickness bit to solve my problem. The rest has been going in the bin since ... I never thought to collect it to sell for recycling ... though in the process of building the Warpverter I have certainly collected a lot of enamelled copper wire which will be recycled eventually.

I visited a friend who does scrap metal and he has a wire stripping machine. He cuts wire into 18" lengths then feeds it through. It was amazing to see a large wheelie bin half full of bright shiny new looking copper wire. At that stage he was getting only $9/kilo ... but that was several years ago and prices have gone up.

Cheers, Roger

Bryan1

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Joined: 22/02/2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 1403

Posted: 04:07am 25 May 2025

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I bought a solder sucker off the snapon van back in '02 and did buy a spare nozzle for it, now it still does a great job with the original nozzle. With copper wire I now have several box's full of odds and ends which I do intend oneday to melt down and make some bronze, gunmetal etc when a new thoughtout design comes to mind.

A few years ago for a bit of fun I made a 2" copper tube oil burner and connected it to that 3 phase blower hooked up with a VFD for speed control and when I finally got the oil burner working it shot a 3 metre flame out of my shed door so turned it off straight away as the point was proved it does work.

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