Craftsman Professional Dual Heat Soldering Gun

Not THAT powerful

I recently bought a new one based on the reviews and price. I am somewhat disappointing. From opening, the case is cheap, and the stand is very very cheap. However, I can live with that. Upon using it, I discovered the switch is NOT a dual position switch, so it does NOT have dual power. What It does have is automatic 400 watt power until tip gets hot, then 150 watt maintenance power. So, it is a fast heat 150 watt soldering iron. The tip is big, and with my sight going, it is not good for fine solder work, but I didn't buy it for that anyway. I thought it was a super heavy duty 400 watt iron, and I found out the hard way it is not. I tried soldering some heavy metal and it did no better than my 140 watt Weller. That's when I did more research and learned the truth. BTW, the big whole under where the tip is, is a light. It has a big light bulb in it, but doesn't shine a lot of light. If you have used Weller gun, lights about the same, and has about the same heat up speed and power.

good gun

a joy to use a solder gun that gets hot enough to do the job

not impressed

I perchased this item the other day to replace my old weller after i read all the great reviews, and maybe it was because the one i got was defective but as soon as i fired it up and tinned the tip that was the last time the tip got hot, from then on the center of the replacable tip was hot enought to solder but the end was cold enough to touch, no big deal i got a replacement and guess what this one wouldnt get hot enough to even tin the tip haha.  So i went and got a replacement weller model(just to make sure its not my skills) and it works great, anyway thats my take on this gun.

NIfty

This is a great lightweight soldering iron.

I have several of the gun types

I have had several standard gun types and they kept loosing the connection between the tip and the gun. i got this on the hopes that it would not have this problem. i am VERY pleased, my soldering has significantly improved. i was concerned that the tip would be too big for thin guage wire, but it is great... Well worth the cost!

Hot quick!

Great for instant high heat. It's light weight and gets into small places such as under a car dash. The only down side is there isn't a cheap replacement tip like other solder guns. The tip is actually the heating filament so I believe the cost is around $30.

Great for home projects of all sizes!!

This solder gun is great for all sorts of projects. For someone who does crafts the Craftsman Professional Dual Heat Soldering Gun has proved to be a great project helper.

stronger than the wire

great to have for all my solder joints, never have really trusted wire caps, especially in the car

Great product, does what it's supposed to, and will solder everything you need to, quickly too!

If you are new to soldering, or an old pro, this just might be the best thing to ever come along. Heats up in about 30 seconds, and when done cools down in a couple minutes. I like it so much, when I dropped my first one and broke the casing, I went and bought a new one! Sometimes seems like the trigger doesn't work on first pull, but could just be a mental thing. Also has a light on the front that lights up when the trigger is pulled, although the light is pretty much useless for working with.

Heat!

This is a great soldering gun, in fact, I would say that it is one of the best. The fact that snap on rebrands this gun as a blue point and charges substantially more money for it should tell you that. It heats up very quick and and can handle large gauges of wire. The cord is nice and long and the the work light, while not very bright is still useful. This is a prime example of why things are better when they are made in the U.S.A.

Actual Real Review. Others=FAKE

IF you can keep these working, they work well. IF you are electrically and mechanically inclined enough to make semi-regular repairs, it can be very very useful, because it's performance characteristics WHILE WORKING PROPERLY are excellent. Pros:1.It gets extremely hot, extremely fast. Great for on-demand light to medium duty soldering.2.The tip is very durable, and easy to clean. The nickel coating on the tip will last for months before wearing out to the point that you need to start filing it to get acceptable heat transfer. I use my irons for hours every day, so that's saying a lot, in fact the tip has outlasted any tip I've used for any of my irons, ever.3. Built-in light above trigger.4. 10 foot power cord is pretty handy.5. Saves power. I would normally just leave a soldering iron on as I worked on other parts of a project, so that I wouldn't have to wait 5 minutes every time I needed to solder.Cons:1. While it does get extremely hot, extremely fast, the tip is on the smaller side. It's the perfect size for actually engaging a broad range of targets, but because the tip does not contain much mass it can store much heat. For big soldering tasks you need an iron with a big chunky tip, the more copper you have in the tip, the more heat it can build up and STORE allowing you to instantly dump more energy to your target when you make contact, which allows you to solder faster and remove the iron faster, reducing your risk of collateral damage. So if you're considering this soldering gun because it's rated at 400-WATTS and you're looking to do larger work, keep in mind the 400-watts in play here mostly just serve to achieve peak temp faster2. The light.... was a nice thought. But it's almost too dim to be of use. And it's an incandescent. Why not just install a 3 or 4 watt super bright led? They're not expensive anymore.3. My first one quit after one day. The heating element is a removable/replaceable part (the front half of the shiny "barrel" on top slides out the front) so I removed the top screw and pulled it out. With it came white crumbs and pieces of the ceramic insulator which protects the 2 electrodes that plug into the base unit. That connection, where the element assembly plugs into the base unit, is the main problem area. BECAUSE this thing gets so hot so fast, and see's so many hot/cold thermal cycles, the internal quick-disconnect electrodes experience a lot of metal fatigue from expanding & contracting whenever you pull the trigger and let go. These contacts fail early and often. As they loosen the connection gets weaker and you get less power to the iron-tip due to resistance. Then for the same reason the connection becomes a hot-spot and just degrades even faster. So when my first gun quit after one day, I repaired it by cleaning those contacts and tightening the connection. It lasted another month or so, with at least one more tightening/electrode cleaning, before it completely quit again, and this time I decided I resented the idea of the extra homework and wasted time of maintaining it, and I remembered Sears always had a legendary warranty policy, so I went to swap it out.The girl at the register barely had the brain power to form words with her mouth. And when she did, it was only to say she didn't know anything about anything, or to arbitrarily make up answers to deflect me, much like when I called in 30 minutes earlier to make sure I wasn't wasting a trip she seemed to arbitrarily say yes to everything just to get me off the phone.2 managers come over finally. First they had no idea what a soldering gun was, and insisted they didn't stock anything like that. I explained that I checked their in-store stock online before I came. Then they claimed they couldn't warranty it because it wasn't a hand tool. So I had to show them their own return policy. And it just went on and on for about 45 minutes. They tried everything they could to get out of honoring the warranty, from playing dumb, to being dumb, from bizarre interpretation of the terms to just plain making things up, and even walking off for 5 or 10 minutes at a time to check this or that, hoping to tire me out. They even accused me of using it too much, because I mentioned I work from home making solar panels and custom batteries. "Well the warranty doesn't cover your kind of usage." she said. "Define those terms" I said."Well you said you work 7 days a week, 18 hours a day, it's not meant for such heavy usage" she said."I'm not soldering the entire time that I'm working. But it does say heavy duty on the box." I said"Well it's not for commercial use." she said"It says PROFESSIONAL." I said"Yeah but you're using it every day, to make things to sell, that's industrial. It's not for industrial use." she regurgitated."I'm not an industry." I said " I'm a PROFESSIONAL."The whole ordeal took a total of at least an hour. And when she finally did give in and exchange it, she seemed to take an odd amount of pleasure in telling me that since it wasn't a hand tool that the next time it craps out I would have no warranty at all.The replacement had the same problem with the contacts becoming loose, intermittent, dirty/charred. I completely disassembled it, re-wired it, triple insulated the wires, modified the connections to account for thermal cycles. Worked great for a month or so. Dropped it one time and the plastic frame snapped. Re attached using 1700-degree rated adhesive. a month later light stopped working. Fixed that. a few days ago sparks started shooting off of the handle while I was using it, found that the insulation for the power cord, where it exits the handle, was dry rotted and cracked all the way through, exposing the cheap thin gauge wire which broke and was making intermittent contact. So now I've replaced the power cord with wiring that's not garbage. Today I noticed a brand new problem. Another connection that I didn't know existed, and it's the same concept. The heating element assembly, that slides into the top of? With the bad connections that I fixed? Well apparently there's another connection inside the heating element that's suffering from the same problem. Apparently the tip itself detaches from the heating element assembly for replacement, so this connection is essentially shot from the expansion/contraction fatigue as well. When it's cold the contact is strong, and the iron starts up red hot. Shortly thereafter, when different metals begin expanding at different rates under the high temp, the connection begins to separate, and the iron does not produce enough heat to do anything but very light duty work, without fiddling with it. I realize now that this had been making work miserable for me for months and I never realized what it was... So now I'll fix THAT, and continue using it. Because, like I said, if you can keep it working like it's supposed to, it's awesome.But if you're not an incredibly mechanically inclined self-destructive lunatic OCD mad scientist shut in that needs constant adversity to drown out the sounds of the howling demons in your head, like me, I would advise buying something else. By the way, Sears/Craftsman doesn't make these. If you peel off their label, directly underneath it, MOLDED INTO THE PLASTIC is the name of the real company that makes them and the real product name. "WALL since 1864" product name "Trig R Heat". actual company name "Wall Lenk" product model number "LG400"

Seems to work as described

I have tried the soldering gun and it heats up quickly and works just fine.  As long as it holds up to its current operations, I will remain pleased with this purchase.  A little bit big for smaller work, but that is almost expected with a soldering gun.

My husband loves it!

Of all the soldering guns he's owned over the years, this by far is the best one (or so my husband says). He does a lot of tinkering with solderering guns and I wanted to make sure that he had one to last.

Great product

This soldering iron is perfect for larger jobs. It heats up quick and you can use it continously, it needs no cool down time. I use this almost daily for my business soldering heavy gauge wiring to large battery clips (aligator clips). It heats up the bigger aligator clips and wiring guages quickly for a perfect soldering job. I'm not sure how well it would work on smaller jobs as the soldering tip is a bit bigger than most irons and may not fit in tighter spaces. Overall this is a great iron for larger soldering jobs.

The iron gets hot quick, is 100% duty cycle, & won't burn up!

This soldering gun does what it says in the catalog description. It heats up quick ( 30 seconds) and can be used continuously. For instance, when using other U.S.A. brands or import brands of soldering guns you can only keep the trigger on for one minute and then have to let it cool down for four minutes otherwise their soldering gun will start to smoke, possibly catch fire, and burn up. This happened to me once already. I've also gotten specifications of other brands on the internet and the duty cycle is less than 20% (meaning the gun can't be operated in the "ON" position for more than a minute). Not true with this Craftsman soldering gun! I do have a suggestion to make this gun more versatile. How about a variety of tips & accessories for different jobs? Like wood burning, a hot knife, and electronic circuit board work? Just a thought. Great gun, nice price, & made here in the U.S.A!

Craftsman Professional Dual Heat Soldering Gun POWERFUL!!!!

I burned up two weller style soldering guns trying to solder 10 guage multistrand high amp RC wiring. This little SOB kicks ***! Worth every **** penny. This is a must have for soldering. It does Silver solder (97%+) like it was low temp lead/tin solder. 400 watts :)

Craftsman Pro soldering gun melts solder in wire not insulation

The Craftsman Pro Dual heat soldering gun is very nice.  The tip takes solder and heats wire melting solder to wires quickly so insulation dose not melt.  Much nicer than the competition.  The light is an added plus the 2 lights on the competition burned out during first use, O ya that well er would not warm my fingers after a few uses, so in the trash it went.  We are very pleased with the Craftsman Pro Soldering gun.  Thank You Sears for providing a better tool than your competitors but creating a tool that is better quality i Pray for many years ahead.  Sears We Pray You continue to sell tools made in America, i am fed up with foreign inferior tools.  The True Americans have made this Nation great, not politician's with trade agreements.  Americans purchasing Sears products keep Sears and K mart in business. Why are the politicians selling America to foreign countries?

Great iron for larger jobs

First of all, I'm pleased this iron is made in the USA. The quality of the unit clearly indicates as such. I actually have two of these soldering guns, one for home and one for work. Both have proven to be extremely useful at heavier soldering tasks. 

My iron at home is usually used for electronics soldering related to my hobby of RC cars. It works great for heavy 12 gauge battery wire, motor terminals, and soldering custom battery packs. It has the power to make a good joint fast, without getting surrounding areas too hot. This is especially important for soldering tabs on batteries. 

My iron at work at work just finished a short production run, soldering 10 gauge wire to a specialized connector. It easily beats much more expensive irons we have in terms of both heat output and not giving trouble on the job. I'm very pleased that I'm now the person others come to when they need a unique soldering job done. 

All and all, if you're looking for a iron for heavier work, this is more than likely a good iron to go with. 

Nice tool, different temps work great

Nice tool. So far I'm happy with it. Still working on a 1952 military trailer wiring project. The only problem is the light didnt work from right outta the box. And the bulb itself is kinda hard to get to, even when taking the front of the gun apart. Oh well, I dont plan on soldering anything in the dark!!. Well balanced, and the gun heats very quick, as the blister on my left middle finger can attest to. The solder melted very quick, and next thing i know, my finger is on the gun, sizzling. Other than that, I'm very happy with it. Worth the money, compared to other guns Ive worn out in the past.