Cold Heat soldering, possible cooling material
 

I was watching tv today, and saw a commercial for a soldering iron that cools almost instantly. It was the cold heat soldering system. From what i gather., the tips are a form of carbon, which the company calls Athalite. It apearantly will cool from 800 farenheight to be touch safe in seconds. Does anyone know anything about this or its cooling potential? I know graphite is excellent at dispersing heat, but is too brittle to be used. Maybe these people found a way to reduce this factor? Let me know what yall think
Derek

I think the reson is that it has a low specific heat - ie doesnt take much energy to heat it up a lot. Maybe not because the graphite (no idea what its SH is..), maybe just the design, with the tip being very small.

As an example, get a very thin peice of STEEL (not alu, or somethinig that might melt!) and heat it with a lighter, or another gas flame. It will go bright red hot instantly, but as soon as the heat source is gone, its touchable. This happens because at that temp, the dT is somuch, that it loses most of the heat instantly, and because its so thin, only the surface needs to be cooled, and the heat doesnt need to conduct very far atall before it can disipate.

Might be compleatly wrong though.

@ work we use graphite, and one thing thats important to note, is that its MESSY. Machining it probably wouldnt be fun, atleast cleaning up the mess after wouldnt be!

For a piece of material cooling the conductivity isn't important since its cooled by convection, not conduction.

I have a cold heat soldering gun....first time I used it I broke the tip off. Very soft and fragile.
PS: The soldering gun sorta sucks too. If you have a clamp assembly to hold the wire and perfect work conditions,you can manage a decent joint.