October 11th, 2008 Soldering Hint
There are lots of ways you can clean your soldering iron tip, but i never saw one that cleans so well. Have you ever tried cleaning it with one of these ?
I think it’s main use is somewhere in the kitchen, but it works great for cleaning the soldering iron tip. Or if you like the pro version of this cleaning sponge you can take a look at Curious Inventor, I have to admit i first saw the idea there.
and the results…
before cleaning
after cleaning
These things cost about $0.5 from where i got it so it’s cheap investment for a clean tip 
October 12th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Yeah…the “pro” version is made of brass and is extremely soft to touch (and solder loves to stick to brass). This is made of steel, is much more abrasive and if you have a half-decent iron, you’ll scrape off the plating on your tip. And it won’t be as effective because solder doesn’t stick to steel as well.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Socrat you’re right solder doesn’t stick to solder it’s more of a force that’s keeping the solder between the threads. I haven’t seen any bad effect so far..
October 12th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I’m using the same method for cleaning my soldering iron tip, it cleans well even if it’s just steel and it doesn’t affect the tip as you might think
October 18th, 2008 at 3:28 am
[...] várias maneiras de limpar o bico mas esta é que nunca tinha ouvido [...]
October 18th, 2008 at 3:33 am
Awesome tip! Thanks for sharing with us electronic newbies
October 18th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Thanks Eurico
October 18th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Since the soldering tips were coated to avoid erosion on the tip, any abrasive method must not be used. The decent (and pretty expensive) solders, come with a hard celulose sponge pad that gets very soft when moistened, and the temperature shock is the only responsible for cracking the dirt out of the tip without any damage to the coating. Just as an example: http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=4078 or http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/browse.jsp?N=500005+1003121&Ntk=gensearch_001&Ntt=sponge&Ntx=
There they are as unexpensive as the kitchen type and your solder will be really thankful.
Greetings
October 18th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Greetings Roberto, i still think the brass sponge is the most efficient cleaning method for solder tip. The thermal shock coming from the wet sponge adds maybe 2-3 seconds of waiting time, until your solder tip becomes hot enough again.