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There is the claim that contaminating the tip of a thermocouple with other metals will lead to a wrong reading. It is for example claimed that solder touching the tip will not allow you to read an accurate solder iron temperature. This is not the case, other metals at the thermocouple tip do not impact the measurement. The reason for this is that the Seebeck effect is an electrical potential that is occurring along a temperature gradient in a wire. That means between a hot end and a cold en …

When soldering electronics the temperature of the solder iron tip is very important. It is also not easy to measure with a K-type thermocouple, since the K-type wires do not wet out with liquid solder, but rejects it and does not make a good contact with the liquid metal. The standard to measure the tips of solder irons is the Hakko FG-100B tester. But it has s pretty large thermal mass and 3 wires that lead off the heat from the tip. In my eyes not ideal.For a long time I wanted to make a simpl …