Other than the obvious one of price, are there any negatives to purchasing and using one? Which tips, which features are suggested? Brand?
I have an American Beauty model 105A3. I only have the tweezer tip. I mostly use it for making turnouts where I solder the rail to PC board ties. It is ideal for that. I find I do better adding detail parts and such to brass car sides by using a conventional soldering iron. Small parts are hard to hold with the tweezer tip as they tend to zing off in all directions when you squeeze hard enough to get good electrical contact to make heat.
Do you have to use a heat sink to do that with a conventional iron? (I thought a resistance soldering unit would make a heat sink unnecessary.) We have a thread here where Pray59 is building a brass bridge. Resistance soldering would aid in that process, I would think.
Fotheringill, Thanks for asking this question! I have been soldering for about 50 years and thought I was an expert on the subject, but until this very morning I had NEVER heard of resistance soldering. I found this website that helped me understand what it is all about! http://www.resistancesoldering.com/ As a tool nut, I am going to have to get me one of these, I can only imagine the expert job one can do soldering track and feeders! Thanks again for this question (and to R_I_Straw) ! ! Joe
I try to be fast whenever I solder to avoid using heat sinks. If the surface is clean and you have a good flux and a sharp point, it usually works. However for track work on plastic ties I do have a good collection of Radio Shack clip-on heat sinks. I have found that the points on the resistance soldering tweezers need to be cleaned occasionally to get good contact. I clamp them onto a piece of fine sand paper and pull, flip the paper over and do it again.
I have a resistance soldering unit, which I used when adding lost-wax brass castings to brass locomotives in #1 scale and O scale. I have not used it for a long time, though, since I stopped building the larger scales. I used solder paint when adding the castings, which made for very clean soldering.
Good evening folks, After "test driving" a resistance soldering (RS) unit, I knew I HAD to get one. My father helped me build one (the transformer part) and used the commercial tweezers. This unit works well for feeders to rails; too powerful for delicate overhead (trolley) work. I've since bought a used AB unit. It has enough control to solder etched wire fittings to code 32 phospher-bronze wire (.008"). ALso have used this unit to remove soldered rail joiners from my friend's N scale turnouts without destroying the turnouts. My experience with the tweezers has led me to clean them after every use. That ensures good contact every time. Not having this tool in my "inventory" would really be a loss!!
Solder paint is a paste, which is a mix of solder and flux. Just put it where you want it and heat. Very controllable location, so for instance when fitting brass castings, there should be no cleaning up afterwards.
Hmmm .. that's good to know. I've never heard of solder paint before. I have a PBL "Hottip" resistance solderer with five positions of selectable power up to 300 watts. (I know .. I could just about arcweld a ship's plating with 300 watts) LOL. But, I have found this tool to be extremely handy over the years. As Russ mentioned above, it was a little difficult to hold small items with the tweezer tips until I got used to it. I also have a small metal vice that came with the unit that has a ground and a pencil soldering gun that makes that part easy to overcome. When using the resistance solderer for extensive work, such as soldering hand laid frogs, I use a couple of large, old Craftsman sockets as heatsinks. It works so well that even the hot glue that I laid the rails with does not melt under them. All in all .. I vote that a resistance solderer is a great investment. Just be prepared to spend some time to learn how to use it efficiently.
I have a resistance soldering unit (American Beauty) which is used to build turnouts and solder track feeders. When installing decoders; Kato Mike, LL 2-8-8-2, Bachmann 2-8-0 and Mountain; a soldering iron works better. I have found it very hard to hold the decoder wires without shorting the tips together. I my opinion installing decoders goes better with a soldering iron. John Butler
I hear that American beauty is having a sale on resistance soldering system 105hcm. www.americanbeautytools.com only thru spring.
I know I want one and if the sale price is right I will get one. I hear there not cheap, but anything that's worth it isn't. It looks like the ticket to solder drop feeders as decussed and maybe do some CWR (Continuios Welded Rail). I will have a lot of code 138 and 125 rail to do, Thanks for the tip. "Still Training After All These Years"
