How to Replace Soldering Iron Tips

Different soldering jobs require different sizes and shapes of soldering iron tips: for example, you’ll need a small tip to solder small circuit boards; it’s easiest to solder integrated circuits with a specialized tip designed for multiple pin configurations; and larger tips are best for soldering sizeable cables.

Most soldering iron manufacturers provide a variety of soldering iron tips. Although soldering iron tips are rarely interchangeable between manufacturers, the tip replacement process is largely the same. In addition to your soldering iron and additional soldering iron tips, you may need a set of small pliers.

Before you start, ensure your soldering iron is unplugged and allow it to completely cool so you don’t burn yourself. Once you’re sure the iron has cooled, unscrew the locking nut holding sleeve that secures the tip and currently installed soldering iron tip. You may be able to unscrew the nut by hand if you frequently change tips. If the locking nut is frozen, use a set of small pliers to unscrew it.

Once you’ve unscrewed the nut, slide the retaining sleeve and nut off the soldering iron’s heating element and remove the soldering iron tip from the sleeve. Place the replacement tip into the retaining sleeve and then slide it back onto the heating element of the soldering iron. The last step is to slide the retaining nut over the sleeve and soldering iron tip and tighten by hand so that you can easily replace the tip next time.

Be sure not to over-tighten the locking nut beyond what you can do by hand. Your soldering iron expands and contracts as it heats and cools. Excessively tightening the locking nut may cause the nut to bind and make future tip replacement needlessly difficult.

In order to maximize soldering iron performance and extend the operating life of your soldering iron tips, you should keep all tips well tinned, which involves removing any oxidation and contaminants and coating the tip with a thin layer of solder. You can read more about tinning soldering iron tips.

Soldering Tattoo Needles (Part Two)

(Continued from Part One, which you can read here.)

You may be wondering how tattoo needle manufacturers group individual needles in a configuration like a flat, and how they’re made loose or tight. Loose and tight needle groupings are created with the jig. A jig can be as simple as a tool the size of a drill bit, or you can buy custom jigs specifically designed for tattooing. When you build your own needles you’ll use solder, heat, and flux, so your jig will need to be a type of material to which the solder and needles won’t stick. Choose your jig wisely.

Here’s how you create a loose or tight needle grouping. You lay out the needles and then place them in the jig where you’ll do the initial soldering with soldering iron. If the needle grouping needs to be tighter — like when you’re building a liner configuration — you’ll need to remove the grouping from the jig and place it in a smaller or tighter hole, thus compressing the grouping. After the needles have been compressed, you resolder the needles.

The distance from the tip of the needles to the point where you solder the needles together will influence whether a grouping is loose or tight. A higher solder point will give the needles a little more flexibility, softening the tattoo. Because you need a stiffer configuration, a typical liner will be soldered lower down the grouping with more solder and flux than a shader or loose grouping will.

Let’s take a second to outline how you identify needle groupings by looking at the manufacturer’s blister pack. A 1214RS needle consists of twelve-gauge needles (12) in a group of fourteen individual needles (14) in a round configuration that is loose or a shader (S), so a 1215RS is a fourteen round shader. A 1215CM consists ofsoldering fifteen twelve-gauge needles in a curved mag configuration.

When you know how manufacturers commonly group needles, you can use this information for soldering your own needle groupings. With the right soldering equipment, knowledge of needle groupings, and a little practice, you will be able to solder your very own tattoo needles.

Soldering Tattoo Needles (Part One)

Tattooing can be expensive, but you can cut costs by educating yourself in certain subjects — for example, you can save money by soldering your own tattoo needles. Buying pre-made and -sterilized tattoo needles is commonplace these days, but there was a time when every apprentice had to solder their own needles. If you’re going to be a good tattoo artist, you need to know the tools of your trade, and making your own needles is a great way to better understand your craft. You’ll need to purchase a soldering station or soldering iron if you don’t already own one.

When we talk about a tattoo needles, we’re not talking

about a single needle like the kind you see at the doctor’s office — we’re talking about a group of needles soldered to a needle bar. The needles have different diameters, lengths, and tapers. There are also textured needles, which have pits in the needle for potentially carrying more ink.

You create tattoo needles by soldering a group of needles to a needle bar or back stem. The needle bars are around four-and-a-half to five inches long, and all needle bars designed for tattooing have a loop or eyelet at one end. The needle groups can be made into whatever shape you want, but the most commonly used groupings are flats, magnums, and rounds. Flats are used for shading, magnums for fill work, and rounds for line or portrait work.

You make rounds by soldering the needles in a circular pattern. Tight rounds are best for line work; loose rounds are better for shading. You solder needles side-by-side in a row to create flats. Flats can be tight or loose as well, though most tattoo artists prefer loose groupings for shading. Magnums are soldered side-by-side like flats, but they are separated into lower and upper rows, or they are double stacked.

Making your own tattoo needles is a painstaking process, at least in the beginning, and you’ll need to have the proper equipment before you can get started. In addition to your soldering station or iron, you’ll also need solder, flux, and you may want different soldering iron tips for cleaner solder joints. You will need to tin a new or dirty soldering iron tip, which involves coating the soldering tip with a thin layer of solder. Whether you buy or make your own needles, they must be individually packaged and autoclaved before use.

(Continued in Part Two, which you can read here.)