I think when you get to variances of 5F or so, it really doesn't matter. 
I'd like to add my voice to the growing Hakko chorus. It is an absolutely wonderful tool to use, works well and quickly heats. Also, I use an older Weller 140 Watt for track work. As has been said you can usually find these at estate sales, often in nearly new condition for $20.
Rick
As long as you don't drop your Weller soldering gun, they last for decades. Mine is about 30 years old, it replaced one that I... you guessed it... dropped! 
The Bakelite case doesn't stand up to impacts.
I'm still using a Weller my dad bought back in the late sixties or early seventies. It has the nuts vs the screws for securing the tip so I'm not sure when when the switch happened. Bakelite case for sure and still works great.
My Weller iron holder always had a place for the three favorite tips...so I am thinking about that...
Now that I have the Kakko and assorted extra tips, I needed a place to store them. The only tip holder Kakko has is for the T15 long tips...that I could find.
https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-B...aps%2C154&sr=8-7
and these T18 tips are short and a bit larger in diameter. So it turns out you can buy the T15 holder and drill out the holes a bit, say 9/32 and maybe about 9/16 deep and the T15 holder will work. The T18 tips will fit and only slip down to the depth you drilled.
And thoughts? Better way to store tips? Free block of wood drilled just as good or better?
@Rick posted:I'd like to add my voice to the growing Hakko chorus. It is an absolutely wonderful tool to use, works well and quickly heats. Also, I use an older Weller 140 Watt for track work. As has been said you can usually find these at estate sales, often in nearly new condition for $20.
Rick
I hope Hakjko is good, have one coming in this week and ordered the assorted tips.
I predict you won't be sorry Ray. Just add my simple mod so you don't accidentally screw up and change the calibration. That was my only complaint with the operation, why they didn't put those on the panel totally escapes me!
John, yes I can see where that would be a real PITA, thanks I'll be sure to do that.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I don't think you'll be sorry Sean. I made one small mod to mine to fix an omission in the design.
One thing that's frequently mentioned in the reviews is the fact that they didn't label the CAL and SET options on the buttons. In order to do a calibration or set a temperature, you hold down one of these buttons for several seconds. That's great, but if you forget which is which, you screw up the temperature calibration instead of setting the temperature. After doing that a couple of times, I decided that a design adjustment for the panel legends was needed. Haven't had the problem since.
Haha, I got mine and read the instructions and I see what you mean. I just labeled mine too, thanks for the tip!
I read the instructions that came with the unit which pointed me to the Hakko website. There is so much to this soldering iron than is mentioned in the boxed instructions. The PDF you can download from the site is recommended. The controller in it isn't powerful enough to fly to the moon in the '60s, but it's more than I expected.
