Picked up for a quid at the Lifeboat day, my first thought when seeing this soldering iron was, "How rubbish will this thing be?"
Parkside tools are available from the infamous middle of Lidl, and in my experience, are usually pretty good quality. I have a small cordless screwdriver which is nearly as good as the Bosch version but half the price.
Powered by 3 AA batteries, this could be a useful addition to the toolkit when emergency cord-free soldering is required.
Anyway, the first problem with this was that it didn't appear to work. The light on the front came on, but the bit warmed a little, but then cooled. Not great, so with nothing to lose, I poked around inside.
To be fair, there's not much going on inside. The batteries are held in the handle, and a pretty simple switch does the work. Fro this, I work out that to warm the iron u, you have to slide the switch forward AND press the button on the front. That's why it appeared not to work. The iron is hot when the LED is on.
The connection between switch and element wasn't good. A bit of plastic that holds the two parts together was broken, so I blobbed some solder on the joint.
Screwed back together, I managed to make the device melt solder, but at 6W, it's a bit gutless. I tinned a couple of wires and eve soldered them together, but it's a slow process. Having said that, for a pound, it can live in my toolbox as being much better than nothing in some situations.
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