Quote Originally Posted by marxviper View Post
By the way, how to clean the soldering iron? it takes ages to heat them up.
Take an old sponge and drip some water on it. While it's hot quickly drag the tip of the iron along the sponge. You should be pulling the iron across the sponge. Also you may want to tin the iron, which means putting a little bit of solder on the tip of the iron before you start on a solder joint, just enough for the hot part to turn silver from solder. This will help you to find the hot part of the tip if it isn't a great iron and will make the actual melting of solder faster. When putting it into storage put a blob of solder on the tip to keep it from oxidizing, it will melt off easily the next time you go to heat it up.