Alex designed this soldering iron tip holder. It’s an aluminum bar bended into shape, with holes for the tips drilled into it. As basic as it is, it’s both functional, and good looking.
After everything was said and done, it took about an hour to get it made and on my desk. Not bad for solving my problem perfectly to the tune of $7!
If that’s really made out of aluminum and has rounded corners, you might want to brace for a call from Apple’s lawyers — not to mention that you’re calling it an “i”ron tip holder.
Ask for a cell with Samsung and at least you’ll get the Korean meal twice daily in the federal pen. See you in 40 years.
LOL. I want an i-ron tip holder too!
Oh man, if I ever sell them, I’m totally branding it iRon just to see what happens :)
I guess it looks pretty neat, but having to let the tip cool down before you can place it in the holder is not too practical.
You don’t, that’s why I picked aluminum :). The bar is intentionally wide enough so that it can’t place hot tips closer than a half inch from other stuff on the desk, and it’s tall enough so they won’t scorch the desk top it’s on. Obviously both of those fail if it falls over/if something falls on it/etc etc, but it’s better than my current iron-stand-integrated holder, so I’m happy.
Does your iron have some kind of tool that lets you remove the tip and place it into the stand bottom-first? That obviously makes it not a problem, but wouldn’t work with any iron I’ve ever used.
It doesn’t – unfortunately, the WES51 irons from Weller use a screw-on sheath to retain the tip when you put it in. Changing the tip requires unscrewing it, sliding it off, pulling the tip out, putting a new one in, putting the sheath back on and screw it back together. It’s sort of a bummer, but I end up just using a pair of pliers to do all the unscrewing and tip handling anyway, so the fact that the tips are hot is mostly irrelevant. And for what it’s worth, you can just as easily put the tips in upside down if it makes it easier not to have to turn them around.
Nice idea. I think that I have to get over to my local aluminum monger and get a piece of aluminum and maker one myself. Maybe from a square tube so it won’t just fall over so easily on my messy desk.
I thought about a square tube too, but ended up deciding this looked better to me. The ends bent farther in on the bar than I’d have liked, though, for lack of a proper sheet metal brake, so it’s a bit taller and less stable than I’d planned. Still quite solid though, it slides before tipping unelss you bump a tall, central tip.
If you do go the square bar route, Home Depot sells square aluminum towel bars for like $3 a piece. They’re half inch, so the tips will sit on the bottom and make it hot, but the heatsinking effect should mitigate any potential damage. You certainly can’t beat the price – the 1″ square tubes, at least from home depot, are $20. I think 3/4″ might be more like $12-13. In any event, still pretty reasonable for the project.
Living in Kuala Lumpur makes it hard to find a Home Depot, but I’ve got an ACE within walking distance so I’ll give it a go first before trying a proper metal shop.
Repurposing things for your own purposes is rather fun. There are quite a lot of those $1-$3 shops here with only items from Japan that a often go to to pick up some crap and use it for something else than it was originally meant to be used for.