I remember owning a mains CN15 that had a pink ceramic element shaft, and
hence a fully floating tip, that was specifically sold as being leakage
free. And Dave, I reckon you must have experienced the Antex unplated bits -
I'm not that old ! (although I probably wasn't much more than a kid when I
owned my first Antex). In fact thinking about it, the mains fixed temp one
that I keep just for very fine work, has a needle tip that I did not fit all
that long ago, which is unplated copper.
We used to use Savbit solder way back, when I was an apprentice. We used
Adcola irons in that workshop (about two points to the left of heated pokers
...!) and they had solid copper or copper alloy tips. As I recall, Savbit
had a small amount of copper as part of the basic tin-lead alloy, and was
very good at preserving tips. However, I have not used that stuff for
years - if it even still exists. The leaded solder that I use, and have done
for a very long time now, is a Multicomp product. Perhaps with all of this
lead free crap that we have to put up with now, the tip manufacturers have
done subtle things with the plating to try to make it more compatible with
the dreadful stuff and its aggressive flux cores, and my leaded solder no
longer suits. If you recall, we had a discussion about tip life a few months
back. I have stopped using my trusty old Weller Magnastat station, purely
because the tips were not lasting five minutes on a 14 hour per day iron,
and they were getting pretty expensive. I used to keep my Pace vacuum
desolder station powered all the time as well, but same story. With tips at
over seven quid a throw now, it gets turned off between jobs that need it
...
Arfa
