One more tip:
My soldering station is a 35 year old Weller. It was kept on for at least 8 hours a day and sometimes over a weekend back in the mid 70's (I was a TV and consumer electronics technician back then). It currently has a tip that is over 30 years old and is still in perfect condition today.
Just before shutting down your soldering iron or station be sure to clean the tip (I use a damp sponge) THEN put a good coat of solder on it to seal out air. The next time you turn it on just wipe the tip clean, re-tin and you are good to go.
Everything you said is great and useful information, although you should keep one thing in mind, your soldering station/pencil and tip are 30+ years old. At that time soldering tips were still being made with Lead Cores.
Tips of todays world are generally made with a copper core surrounded by iron. Hence the term "iron clad" tips. The damp sponge method works well with these tips when your doing alot of small, tedious work that requires no or very little solder on the tip, such as modding systems, where you need to add RGB to the Video chip or L/R audio to an A/V port etc, but is not recommended as a preferred cleaning method.
The tips don't respond well to constant and intense fluxuations to heat changes. Therefor constant tinning of the tip (using tip tinner/cleaner) is not recommended. Instead using
brass wool, or a brass wire brush to clean the tip works very well, I generally use a tip tinner/cleaner every so often or on the intial breakin of a new tip. When you use your station right before your going to turn off your iron, brush it with the wire brush, then flood it with your solder. Let it cool, when you comeback to use it again, simply heat it up and clean it with the wire brush to knock off the solder you previously flooded it with, then apply a small amount of solder to each side of the tip and start your work. Repeat this process to keep the tip cleaned and ready for use! It helps to have a soldering station (I personally use an APE or XYtronic supertemp station) Using
flux is a great practice, to simply explain it, Flux helps your solder go where you want it and not stick to your tip or other unwanted surfaces, it also allows your solder to flow much better with less heat! Although a prolonged (3 seconds or so) amount of heat with or without flux is and can be helpful to allow your solder to flow where you want it and to make good connections especially on
thru hole products.
Keep in mind that generally the heat from your iron wont damage a PCB or Chips as long as your gentle, when PCB's are manufactured they always go
through cleanign and heating process that is far greater than that of the temp used to melt your solder. Me personally I dishwash all the boards I work on and repair, then stick them in the over @ 117 degrees for 15 mintues, they will come out dry as a bone and ready to plug into any power source without the chance of an electric surge.
Another thing I have noticed several people say is to use sandpaper or an abrasive material to clean your tip or dipping your tip straight into flux....THIS IS SOMETHING YOU NEVER WANT TO DO...When you use something that abrasive your literally ruining your tip. Also flux IS corrosive. The iron clad material that surrounds the tip is very very thin, when you use sandpaper your removing that protective coating and allowing the copper center to be exposed, you WILL quickly burn up your tip.
Another tip for small and cheap based irons (such as radioshack etc) or well any iron for that matter, try not to bang it around, drop it, etc the ceramic core inside the iron is very sensitive and easily damaged. Try also to not leave your iron on for an extended amount of time without actually using it for something.
New solderin iron.. practicin.. can't get iron to "tin" Seems I remember it "coating the tip". This just beads up. Bad iron? or clutz behind it?
Refer to the above I just wrote out, you can also refer to google search engines for alot of useful information! I mod/repair older gaming systems on the side so I tend to solder quite often.
Here is a great source of information on keeping your tips cleaned and well maintained, aswell good source of info on different grades and types of solder to use. Hope all this information helps!
