M4 screw in spade / flat soldering tips?

[Mr Gus]

Spent a few days with my cheap-ass lidl special (parkside soldering station) & the useful tip of the two has just melted away (seriously, we have merely the tip of the tip left) ..I've been tinning, crimping & solder flooding MC4 connectors et al & still have a way to go.
(Weller iron died years ago sadly)
Have been using a good weller solder (have no fear there)

Does anyone know of a good source of M4 soldering tips for the PLS48 B1 soldering iron (also an aldi workzone tip) other than ebay?

I need em in a hurry to finish up & move these panels from my workshop

cheers lads.

[Mr Gus]

Sod it! too much costly faffing looking for the right spare.

Antex 40 watter (owners of weller too)!?
Delivered for £12

Back on the Kinve panels tomorrow it is.

[Mr Gus]

Forgot to say, & maybe this is atypical of lidl "own brand tools"

Luckily I'd kept the box, with the manual, rang the phone number (it is no longer recognised)
Went on the Lidl website looking for Parkside tools..
finally found the bit that mentioned "spares & service"
Looked through the list, ..no parkside.
Parkside it turns out belong to the brand "kompernass" who have a big old website for spares.

Located the spare, it would have cost me more in delivery to replace a pig iron quality soldering tip (yes I tinned it) around £8.95 processing time stated as 5-7 days.

Thus the Amtex at £11.99 delivered (today) for a 40 watt soldering iron that has uk spares distribution amongst a variety of bigger names.

I did buy the Lodl parkside unit some years ago (the first unit crapped out within the first year) I had to argue hard for an actual replacement which I needed at the time, died mid job) ..& was left angry that they simply wanted to refund 2/3 of the price & be done with it, ..in other words it died on its second or third outing & the "warranty" from Lidl associates was utter Ollocks, essentially it cost em more to process the claim for the original unit (which I had to dispose of) & get a replacement sent out by them, which they really were not keen to be doing.

I argued a toss & made them supply new product which has been used a few times since ( I was going to give it to the local cubs but too much H&S for them) so kept it & used it "lightly"

Solar cables are the hardest job its done & the tip, used once before, (tinned) died, via massive corrosion mid way through the job.

So whilst it may be temp controllable it is not cost effective (the tips are sold 1+1 ..pin tip & flat tip combination, costing half as much again as the original iron, with spares shipped from abroad.

£4.60 per tip for the new one, uk stock, amazon prime, cpc, farnells etc.

[smegal]

This happened to me once. I put it down to the flux in one of my rolls of solder (no idea where it was from, probably bought in the middle east 20 years ago) being quite aggressive, there is a large grove missing out of the tip of one of my old soldering irons.

[Mr Gus]

Other than what came with the lidl workstation, I've always used decent Weller solder, while reels not pics of one with it went bundled for added security.
In all the years I've used it never had to replace a tip in this manner, I'm putting it down to crap metal & bad castings / pouring.

The new solder tip has had an 8 hour work out, zero degradation.
(Weller solder reel from a proper promontory online)

Time to upgrade cabling on my woodgasifying campstove next.(nabbed from a redundant microwave now on its way to the tip, cut the s/steel sides off for my beer pumps.