For serious work, industry rules call for hard grounding everything involved. Hard grounding operator person is dangerous, so some current limiting resistor of circa 1 megohm is added.

In addition to mandatory grounding, GFCI may or may be not in use, not for actual components protection, but for stopping insulation deterioration problems *earlier* before they grow to full blown short circuits.  Downside is as always some nuisance tripping happens due to interference.

 

@Ash
Thanks for all that info! Yeah I don't think a mains transformer is crammed into the handle of my iron, and I think I have tested it's continuity to ground before and concluded that it is directly connected. I haven't worked with those extra low voltage sensitive components before, but if I do I will definitely be careful and do research.

I wonder if it would be possible for manufacturers to integrate a GFCI-like device into the iron to be able to omit the transformer and still have high impedance grounding. Maybe that would be more expensive than just having a transformer, who knows.

How much leakage it has right now is not that important. What's important is whether it can change anytime with no advance warning, generally the answer is yes, it can. That's where the transformer will provide your safety

(as long as it is intact - which is worth testing, but unlike a soldering iron, an isolation transformer has huge safety margins in its isolation materials, and they are not stressed by high temperatures)

When you use equipment like a standard user uses home appliances (not covers off and sticking hands in), as long as your equipment is in good condition and reliably grounded (including the ground wiring throughout the house being intact), its perfectly safe as is and does not require any additional isolation between you and ground

Isolation by transformer provides the same level of safety as ground or higher. Electrical codes do define some dangerous situations (typically in the context of industrial settings, the cases where you are with a line powered tool in a confined metal duct ect) where grounding is not considered good enough, but isolation by transformer is - for a reason

I am always barefoot as well, except when actually dealing with electricity or with the electrical installation



Workstations have also a relation to this :

A grounded iron is safe to use, but not ESD-safe in all cases (to prevent damage to components) :

 - The source of the static charge may be present in the circuit, and discharge to the iron. The damage will be exactly the same as if the source was in the iron and discharge to the circuit

 - The most sensitive components nowadays may have abs max ratings in the order of single volts or less. If the circuit is grounded from one source (you and te floor below) and the iron from another source (line ground) the voltage difference between them alone may be sufficient to damage something

So to improve its ESD safety, an iron is better be electrically isolated, than low-resistance grounded. Then it is still grounded through some high value resistance (typ 1MOhm), to prevent slow static charge build up if a static source is present

Then for electrical safety, the iron is powered by extra low voltage (<50V), and the transformer is contained inside the station box

Not all workstation irons are like that, and some can be reconfigured between different grounding settings. The low end ones and those where the controller is in the handle are often powered directly by line voltage and must be low resistance grounded

What years had the best quality of SOX bulbs at Osram/GEC's Shaw factory?

Thank you guys for the information. I'll do my best to take care of it. Thankfully, nothing is shorted and the arc tube is not contacting the IR coating.

Almost had an EOL occur with one of my cheapo HID headlights in The Genesis yesterday. My right headlight kept failing to strike an arc.
Bright flashes from the ignitor, but no light. Later on I tried again, yielding the same result at first, but the second try was successful,
although it gave off a very bright/ flickering purple flash at first... then began flickering madly during warm up time. The lamp flickered
and randomly became a bit too bright... but then it calmed down as time went on, and hasn't had an issue ever since. Not sure what that was about.
This event occurred last night, but I was unable to post about it since I was busy with work. Even though this happened yesterday, and even though
this wasn't an official EOL, I'll count it. Same goes for you guys... if your lamp *almost* went EOL, it counts here... talk about it.

@Ash
Yea the only thing I use the old iron for is large (larger than 14AWG) wires, never for anything small and sensitive.

I should really test out my old iron to see how isolated the tip really is, this is scaring me! And I work on a concrete basement floor (usually with no shoes, though I know that isn't good) so I am probably fairly solidly grounded from an electrocution perspective, which is obviously not super great.

@RRK
The iron layer dissolves in the solder? Isn't that not supposed to happen, like the point of plating it in the first place? Or is some dissolution necessary for wetting?

So temperature control is the main thing here, that is good. Mine has an adjustable temperature readout controller thingy in the handle, not sure how accurate it is but it definitely does adjust the temperature to some satisfactory degree.

Let's agree to disagree about solder I guess, you do what works for you, I do what works for me. Not sure how to phrase this nicely, and I don't feel like whipping out ChatGPT to do it for me so I really hope you don't take this the wrong way: What solder I choose to use really doesn't affect you in the slightest, so I don't know why you care so much. Not worth continuing this conversation. No hard feelings.
 

Part numbers will be hard for buyers to find

"Lamp light 40W CCT 4000K G13 1.5 inch high frequency instant start compatible 50Hz 60Hz rapid start compatible save 80% electricity home office garage factory shop" is probably good enough

Iron layer should be of a certain thickness because it still somewhat dissolves in the solder and also oxidizes in the air. And it wears by contact with objects soldered. As soon you have a hole in iron cladding, soldering tip is quickly dead just in a few working hours.

The reason of having a soldering station is to have tip temperature tightly regulated with high spare power available, which is a requirement for any serious soldering job. Well, some modern irons have a controller in the handle, so can be considered soldering stations in one piece.

You may say whatever you want about 'personal choice' but the truth is 37/63 lead solder is just technically better and that's why it is still exempted for special equipment like military, aviation or telecom.

Reasons:

Lead solder is eutectic. Most of lead free solders are not. Eutectic solder melts or freezes at one single temperature, non-eutectic over a range, being a mix of multiple liquid and solid phases. That gives it some unsightly smoked appearance, and sometimes compromise mechanical strength.

Lead solder wets copper significantly better than lead-free one.

Lead-free solder is significantly more prone to crack at thermal cycling

Lead free solder is prone to grow tin whiskers. Lead solder does not have this problem at all. This is very significant.

Good quality lead-free solder, close to eutectic, requires an addition of a large amount of silver (circa 4%) making it *significantly* more expensive!

Still, eutectic lead solder melts at 183C and most of lead-free ones melt at around 220C. This is some 40C higher. Higher stress on the components, faster flux burn-of, faster tip oxidizing.

Isolation transformer will improve your safety, but may by itself still have enough capacitive coupling to have enough leakage current, to damage sensitive components

For example if you touch it to the gate of a MOSFET while its other terminals are connected to more circuitry that you touch (completing it to ground) etc

So keep it for LEDs and resistors, but don't do modern electronics with it

On the subject of ungrounded irons, i have a more recent story (~10 years ago)

I had a friend here - old guy, their family were friends with my parents, and somehow me and him figured that we can have some fun at the garage. (had - because he had poor health and passed away since)

He was not an electronics guy by any means, but had general handyman hobby (welding grinding), and besides, he liked to buy all sorts of dodgy stuff from Ebay and Aliexpress for gags and entertainment, so i came for the gags and entertainment part

One of the things he got fascinated with was LED lights and gadgets of all kinds. Being from Aliexpress they would blow up all the time

Then we would break out the soldering iron (also from Aliexpress) to hack it to work again (smash the LED that died and solder blob over it, replace capacitor with one out of another blown gadget, etc) and see if it lasts for a while more or smoke comes out again

When holding the board with LEDs (taken out of whatever light or gadget) and touching the iron to them, LEDs would light up - Quite brightly, and quite long stretches of LEDs in series - showing that the voltage is high (typically 1/2 the line voltage, so in our case about 115AC to ground)

The current was small, probably on the order of 0.1mA, which you normally can't feel. However, it clearly can break down to full short to live anytime without any advance warning

So i did just sit in lotus position in a plastic chair and use the iron anyway...