The Cult of the Cool Mac: Made with 100% USDA real meat!

In case you don't watch late night television, the ColdHeat tool promises quick and easy soldering, heating up when the tip comes in contact with a conductive surface and cooling down almost instantly when the job is done.

I picked up a ColdHeat soldering tool from Home Depot in January and I have used it for many different kinds of soldering since then. I've found it to be a real time saver for some tasks, but there are some drawbacks to the tool that keep me going back to my trusty butane soldering iron for many jobs.

Operation
The ColdHeat tool turns on by means of a small sliding switch. A white light tells you that it's powered and a red light tells you that contact has been made and the tip is hot. It's very intuitive. It runs on 4 AA batteries -- which lasted me 6 months -- and it comes in a useful plastic clamshell case with a place to store an extra tip.

The advantages of the ColdHeat are that it heats up and cools down in a matter of a few seconds and that it is cordless. The disadvantages are the awkward size, the electric arc that it generates while heating and the fragile tip.

Uses
You have to be careful selecting the projects to use it on.

If you're merely reattaching a wire to a contact where it has been separated, the ColdHeat makes the repair a snap. You just apply the tip of the ColdHeat tool to the existing solder which it quickly liquefies. Then you place your wire, pull the tool away and you're done. The tip is made of a nonstick material which is very effective.

Trying to solder two wires together is tricky. It's a bad habit of mine, but I usually put a glop of solder onto the tip of my iron and then drag the bead onto my wires when I want to attach them. This method doesn't work with the ColdHeat. The device is awkwardly balanced and you can't just drag a glop across the wires because the tip doesn't pick up solder. You'll want to clamp the wires securely or else you're going to have trouble making the contact necessary for the device to heat up.

Laying down a joint on a board is just as tricky. It gets hot fast enough to crisp most solder in a few seconds, so unlike traditional tools, you don't have the time to play with precise placement. If I'm making something from scratch and I need precise placement, I go back to the traditional soldering iron.

Another occasion to pull out the old soldering iron is when you have to solder sensitive components. In my experience, the ColdHeat's electric arc heating method fries LED's. This is not the tool for working on your computer's MoBo.

This is also not the tool for desoldering or tinning. I just can't get the knack for it with the ColdHeat.

On the other hand, when a speaker wire came off inside an old radio, it was a matter of about a minute for me to crack open the case and solder the wire back in place. My electric soldering iron would have taken several minutes to heat up and it would have added the hassle of dealing with a trailing power-cord. Even my favorite butane iron would have taken a couple of minutes to heat up. If this were a race, the ColdHeat would easily prevail. Imagine a girlfriend/wife/SO waiting impatiently for a repair to her CD player and you have the ideal situation for this tool.

In my last few computer mods, I used both the ColdHeat and my butane torch for different applications. The ColdHeat made it eerily quick to wire up switches to non-sensitive boards. The butane tool was ideal for working with delicate resistors and boards with IC's.

Some Caveats
The ColdHeat tips are fragile and seem to become more prone to chipping or splitting over time with additional heating and cooling cycles. The symptoms of impending failure resemble what you'd expect from dying batteries. It's advisable to buy a second tip and if you do fine soldering, you should buy the conical tip as well. The tool sells for around $20 dollars and the tips sell for around $10 dollars each, so I'm talking about doubling your purchase price.

Summary
It's not an ideal tool, but the ColdHeat does speed up enough tasks that I feel it was a good purchase. It's great for most quick fixes, but don't use this device on sensitive components.