I've been looking at buying a new soldering station since my old one has all but given up the ghost. But I'm curious about lead-free versus normal soldering irons. I understand that lead-free solder melts at a higher temperature, so I can understand why a soldering iron without a temperature control could be intended for one use over another, but if a company's product line includes two temperature controlled irons that both have the same temperature range, but one is marketed as lead-free and the other one not, what is the difference?
We have had *massive* problems with lead free solder, basically the main one is that it doesn't want to solder!
The second problem is that the tips oxidize very easily. Using a watered sponge is now a serious "no no" as this causes the tips to oxidize almost immediately. Instead (as the solder company bloke told us in a meeting) it's back to the old days of re-tinning the tip every time the soldering iron leaves your hand.
We now use the wire wool bundle to clean tips, obviously this is pretty abrasive so needs to be avoided really, but the tips oxidize so bloody quickly that it's almost impossible to not use them.
We generally use JBC irons (the pencil style ones) and had to upgrade a number of stations so that we could get extra heat of out them.
We also are using a number of different solders, one of which uses wax instead of rosin and has a rather sickly chocolate smell when it melts, but nothing beats lead!
Come back lead, all is forgiven!