Fighting Static damage, part 3

 Does your soldering iron plug look like this:

or like this:

There is no way for an iron with the 2 wire plug to have a grounded tip.

So an anti-static strap and mat may not be enough to prevent static damage when used with a 2 wire iron.  There could be mitigating factors with a "hardware store" iron like the Weller SP23, for example if the builder uses a wet sponge to wipe the tip maybe that discharges any static buildup ?    But what about the in-between time when the iron is being used ?  I think a grounded tip is the "suspenders and belt" solution.

I modified my Weller SP23 2 prong iron with a ground wire connected to the tip via the mounting screws on the handle.

The wire is Teflon - I didn't use a series 1 meg-ohm resistor maybe because I wasn't sure what might happen as it heated up.  The grounded Weller measures 2.4 kohms on my DVM from the tip to the banana plug.  One other mod was to wedge in a small, iron plated tip in place of the regular SP23 copper tips, iron plated tips last and last !  I got the iron plated tips from Dan (PL340).

But I stopped using that Weller for a completely different reason than lack of static protection, one day I go over to the bench to do some soldering and realized that the iron was still plugged in - I wasn't sure just how long it had been sitting there powered on (days ?) and felt a little sick.  The Leviton 1470 switches are worthless unless they are used !

I thought a little about some kind of auto-shutoff gizmo for the iron but finally just purchased a temp controlled iron with two virtues, a blinking red light and an on/off switch.

  And of course, it has a 3 wire plug and a grounded tip (1.5 ohms on my DVM from the iron tip to the ground prong on the plug).

Best Regards,

Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm