Genuine vs fake Hakko solder tip comparison

[lsheng]

I measured fake hakko 900M tips and genuine hakko T18-D16 thermal resistance form heating core to the tip. The difference is Very large. The way I did is using a power meter to monitor soldering station power consumption which is proportional to heat output if you deduct all power used for controlling circuit. I used Yihua 853D soldering station which seems digitally PID regulating duty cycle on the heating core and gives smooth power reading.

I set the temp at 200C(real temp is close to 215C), and used different tips to dip tip of soldering iron into water, observed power increase in the process. Since the tips made water evaporate, the tip temperature is set to 100C, between core and tip the temperature difference is 115C.

With hakko T18-D16, the power increase is 24W, with similar shape fake tips, the power increase ranges from 5W to 9W, so the thermal resistance is between 3 to 5 times. This means that Hakko tips get at least 3 times faster thermal recovery speed. The hakko T18-D16 thermal resistance is around 5C/W(to make full 60W of thermal output, you need temperature difference of 300C). Since thermal capacity between real and fake is mostly less than 50% judging by their dimensions, the real experience may not be that bad as suggested by thermal resistance alone. Unlike some believed, the fake one I got are also made from pure copper, but the craftsmanship is rather poor, there are various air gaps between the heating element and the tip. I also did an experiment that I put some metal foil(aluminum and stainless) around heating element, as well as a small piece of solder inside iron(melted when hot to fill all gaps inside), after this even a fake tips can make power increase to 22W, close to real Hakko, and also performs like real Hakko tips too. But this mod is inconvenient as you may fuse the tip onto heating element. By the way, I believe the heating element is not genuine Hakko, but I feel it is good enough. 

[johansen]

water has a highly non linear thermal conduction and boiling rate, so i would repeat your experiment with some other method.


some of the cheap tips have a metal sleeve inside them, it is not bonded to the inside of the cylinder where the heating element goes, it can be pulled out. i would expect the thermal resistance to decrease if you pull that sleeve out. a legit tip would have the chromium coating or whatever it is, electroplated to the copper to prevent the copper from corroding.

[P90]

These reviews are bogus, I bought some to check, they are fakes...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01C6Y4KWQ/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8