Comment on What's a good high wattage soldering iron?
qupada@fedia.io 1 week ago
Performance wise, you'd struggle to beat a JBC station.
I have an older version of this one, has been fantastic: https://www.jbctools.com/cdb-soldering-station-product-1605.html
Price-wise, well that's a whole different story. That station is about $600 USD and change, and individual tips start at about $40.
What it does have though is damn near instant heating (it takes longer for the controller in mine to boot than it does to heat), hot-swappable tips (the metal comb-looking thing is to aid pulling the tip from the handle), and nearly 150 shapes of tips to choose from (see https://www.jbctools.com/c245-cartridge-range-long-life-tip-product-19-design-iron.html).
Their other innovation (now somewhat commonplace) is building the element into the tip, letting them put significantly larger power output into comparatively low thermal mass tips. Does wonders for temperature control.
Here's a reasonable comparison of the older-style (Hakko, Weller) separate element/tip design against the JBC's integrated: https://youtu.be/scvS2yeUH00