Platinum plated soldering iron tips?

[geneiusxie]

Hey guys, I was just wondering why doesn't anyone use platinum plated soldering tips. It would seem like a good solution for those who might accidentally leave their soldering iron on while doing something else. That way, the tip doesn't react with oxygen when the solder is gone.
I do know that gold can be dissolved by lead. But does that happen to platinum?

 

[tpetar]

Probably platinum is so cheap that noone cant resist to do that.

 

[geneiusxie]

Probably platinum is so cheap that noone cant resist to do that.

Well, platinum is actually cheaper than gold right now
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greats...s-pricier-than-platinum-thats-rare-and-scary/
But people still sell gold plated connectors on ebay for a very cheap price.
**broken link removed**
that's 10 1/4 adapters for $11. Standard soldering tips cost much more than that.
A platinum plated soldering tip could use a pretty thin coating, much thinner than gold plated connectors (that have to be thick enough to resist being scratched off) and still be effective. Soldering tips also have a pretty small exposed area, further reducing the amount of platinum needed.
So plating the tips with platinum shouldn't affect the price very much. Probably less than 25 cents per tip.

 

[tpetar]

Maybe people will change their opinion and start to using platinum for this purposes, after your post. I support that, why not.

In near future we will have printers for PCB in homes for low amount of moneys. With printing on any solid material, as glass, porcelan, transparent folie or any other folie,... Todays PCB manufacturing process will be changed under that pressure.

If you want to make multiplayered PCB, just print folie with tracks and throught hole connection for each layer, and put all folies as laminat and you have fast multilayered PCB. Of course this is just fast description.

Material for printing tracks is special and no need protection against oxidation.