Hakko 456 Soldering Iron

The Hakko 456 is in our opinion, the best "light professional" soldering iron on the market!  The folks at Hakko seem to have carefully studied all the shortcomings of the former industry leading products and one by one addressed them.

First off, let me tell you that this will be the last soldering iron you ever have to buy.  Why?  Because it is modular.  Every component of this iron can be easily disassembled and replaced. Better still, Hakko has designed this iron not to fail in all the most common ways, so you'll probably be swapping out your first part, years after the day you'd have been trashing any other iron. 

Here's why:
Ceramic heater- The 456 uses a ceramic heater instead of old fashioned wire wound resistance elements. Not only do ceramic heaters last way longer, they use less electricity to produce the same heat and respond faster to demand, so if you turn up your temperature control, you get almost instantaneous response.  This and other factors allow the 65 watt Hakko to outperform other brands 80 watt irons.

Milled tip-  The tips for the 456 are milled out so the heating element actually slides up inside of them.  This means almost no heat loss.  Conventional wire wound construction which allows nearly half the heat produced to shed off into the room around you.

Tip Enclosure- The Hakko "tip enclosure" is a metal tube that holds the tip onto the heater.  This is a unique concept that as well as creating a little air space around the tip inside the iron to reduce heat loss, has a much more important advance incorporated into it.  The collar mounts to the handle all the way down at the coolest part of the "business end" of the iron with a big robust collar with large hard to damage screw threads.  Other irons have their tip fasteners out near the iron tip where the iron is so hot that the screw threads quickly burn up or get fouled with oxides and seize up.  Once this happens you can't change the tip anymore and have to buy a new iron.  I keep the collar on my Hakko just finger tight.  It never gets hot enough to foul or seize.

Massive Grounded Cord-  Customers come into the shop and report that other brands irons get hot and cold inexplicably and want to know if there is something wrong with them.  This condition is due to the flimsy two wire power cords and the way other manufacturers "dead clamp" the cord right at the end of the handle, the little wires inside get bent back and forth as they use the irons until they break.  Now each time they move the iron as they work, the wires connect for a few seconds, then shift and disconnect, making the iron run hot and cold.  Hakko has made 3 improvements that solve this problem. First is the huge power cord with a ground wire for safety.  Second is the Hakko cord is not clamped at the end of the handle, but farther up inside the handle allowing the wire to begin it flexing inside the handle lessening the stress at a single point and lastly Hakko has added a stress relief spring around the upper part of the cord to further distribute the stresses of cord movement.

Optional tips- In addition to the nice skinny pointed chisel tip (included) that hobbyists seem to prefer, Hakko offers other great tips that can improve your experience.  There is also fatter heavy chisel tip (my personal favorite) and a tip with a flat oval end that makes soldering professional looking joints on lead came incredibly easy.  Just pick up a dab of solder on the oval end and lay it firmly on the joint for about 3 seconds, then lift the iron straight up.

Just $51.95