While this site is technically about Weller Soldering Irons, I would like to briefly introduce you to the company, it’s founder, and the genesis of this now famous company, the electric soldering GUN.
It all started with a Radio Repairman in 1945. Frustrated with the bulky and slow heating soldering irons that were the tools of his trade, Carl Weller decided to improve upon them. Out of his efforts came the world’s first soldering gun – an invention that changed the electronics manufacturing and repair industries forever.
Carl Weller was a radio repairman in the 1930′s. Of course, one of his main tasks was soldering, and the mainstay of his toolbox, similar to a carpenter and his saw, was a soldering iron. However, it took forever for the irons of the day to heat up. Impatient with wasting time waiting for his iron to heat up every time he needed to use it, Carl, like most repairmen, left his soldering iron plugged in all day long. This was not good for the iron though, and it required very frequent cleaning and re-dressing of it’s tip. And, of course, on housecalls, the wait could be a thumb twiddling eternity – and then another thumb twiddling exercise waiting for it to cool down enough to put back in the toolbox. Like many other inventive minds, Carl decided there had to be a better way.
Of course, Carl Weller was not the first to have this thought. Indeed, many before him had tried to create an instantly heating soldering iron. Many even had the notion to heat the tip directly with an electric current. But it was Carl Weller who figured out how, and beat the others to the patent office. The Weller Soldering gun was born.
The reason that soldering irons heated so slowly was that they relied on indirect heating of a large copper mass. Current would flow through a copper coil, heating the coil, which then had to heat the large copper mass of the tip via thermal conduction. A lot of heat was lost in this process before the tip heated to the correct temperature.
Well, Unlike other electrically-heated tools of the time, Carl Weller’s soldering gun used a copper heating element, which formed the tip itself, and which was directly heated by a current of hundreds of amperes produced from a small transformer in the body of the gun. The relatively small mass of the copper element/tip heated in a matter of seconds when the trigger was pulled, and it cooled off just as quickly when the trigger was released.
While simple in concept, This was a larger achievement than you may think. See, the role of a soldering iron, or gun, is not as is commonly believed to heat the solder. It must heat the metals to be joined to a temperature above the solder melting point, and then keep them hot enough for the solder alloying process to happen. This requires not just temperature, but a sufficient quantity of heat. Further, the tip must have good enough contact with the metals being joined to transfer that heat efficiently from itself to the metals being soldered. Quite a bit of a requirement for what looks like a simple loop of copper wire. Part of the “feat” that Carl Weller accomplished was learning how to balance all these requirements into a practical device.
Weller obtained his patent in 1941. However, none of the major manufacturers of the time were interested in his invention. It seems they deemed it “impractical”. Fortunately, like any good entrepreneur, Carl decided to manufacture and peddle his device himself. He built a number of units, by hand, in his workshop, and proceeded to sell them directly to radio service shops – of which there were plenty of in those days. Unlike the manufacturing “experts”, the people who actually used soldering equipment were completely blown over by this new tool. Spurred by this enthusiasm, Weller set up a small manufacturing firm, the Weller Electric Company, and began to produce soldering guns in 1946.
Through the 1950′s The Weller Electric Company, headquartered in Easton Pa, continued to improve and produce it’s soldering gun, particularly in their very popular “Soldering Kits”. The company also produced other electric tool lines such as a Jigsaw and power sander, and by 1961 had not only the Easton Factory, but two additional ones in Puerto Rico.
Continuing his hands-on style of invention, Weller went on to design the Magnastat Soldering iron in the very early 1960′s. This soon highly popular soldering iron served to propel the Weller Electric Company further into the world of soldering equipment throughout the 1960s. In 1970, the successful company was purchased by Cooper Industries, and merged into it’s Cooper Industries Group.
A leading manufacturer of state of the art soldering irons, stations, guns and accessories, today, Weller continues to bring innovation in the fast-growing arena of lead-free soldering technology. Weller High Power stations have the power to handle the extra demands of lead-free soldering and the versatility to tackle a wide array of applications.
