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I have my Pinecil set to 320 C and it works beautifully for leaded solder. I momentarily bump it up to 400 for big ground planes, but rarely.

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It's curious how you use such a big temperature range. I've never used a pinecil despite having friends telling me very good things about it, which picked my interest a bit.

Can you tell us what exactly do you solder at 320ºC and what is the exact type of solder you use and/or Pb and Sn percentages?

Also, is your pinecil calibrated? And which tips do you use at that temperature?

Anecdotally, what usually happens to me at lower temps is the tip and/or the solder wire sticking a bit while I'm soldering which I take as a sign that the liquid solder won't flow correctly and that I have to spend more time giving it heat from tip, than I should.

I use 63/37 solder with a flux core. The Pinecil is amazing, it holds heat really well and gets to 320 C in eight seconds. I didn't calibrate my tip in boiling water, and I don't remember which tip I use now, it's the one that comes by default (B2?).

I only bump it up to 400 C because that was the default, I never use it for more than two or three seconds so the temperature hasn't mattered much. I haven't noticed solder stick, it just sometimes fail to melt properly with large ground planes, so that's when I bump the heat.

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