Where do you guys get your turrets?

[Matt D]

For the life of me I can get solder to stick to the turrets I got from CE. Not sure if maybe I got a batch with bad plating or maybe my soldering skills have gone south. Every joint on the turrets looks like a cold solder joint and the solder just kind of blobs up on them. I have a decent Weller station set to 750 and a fairly large screwdriver tip. I feel like the components are getting way too hot before the solder will flow. I don't remember working with turrets being this frustrating. Anyone try Watts or Hoffman? Mojo?

Thanks guys

[sluckey]

I use Hoffman's turrets. Once I bought some Keystone brand turrets from Mouser. Both are fine.

Try putting a small drop of liquid flux on the turret before putting a clean iron tip to it.

[10thTx]

+1 on Hoffman's.

[Theashe]

I bought them off eBay from China to avoid shipping charges and they worked great. Wound up costing about $10 for 50 turrets, and I bought a board that was already loaded with 60 turrets. Never had an issue soldering to them.

Edit: If you're having trouble getting solder to stick to a metal and flux isn't helping, try scoring the turret with a sanding/diamond file/grinding dremel bit. In some projects that's helped me expose more copper and make a good joint. At the very least it gives you more surface area.

[kwijabo]

i've used hoffman's and watts thick ones and haven't ever had any issues getting solder to stick. my iron has an analog dial so i'm not exactly sure, but i usually have it set to just a hair above 700. but if its one of those turrets that has two power supply caps, a dropping resistor, a tap from the switch and a wire going to the transformer....yeah sometimes there's just so much metal there i need to turn the heat up.

for what its worth, maybe some people can say they've made it work, but for the watts turrets i use a different staking tool than the hoffman ones.

[randalp3000]

I bought a 10,000 of the Hoffman turrets awhile back and sold some on here to share the love.

My add expired but still have a bunch left to share.

randalp3 at gmail dot com if anyone needs a good deal.

edit
yeah the ones from CE are terrible, I think they might be steel.

[dorrisant]

The gold plated turrets from CE are not made to look pretty, they take solder WAY better than the regular ones. Maybe you could try a few of those.

[M Fowler]

I recently got into a bad batch of turrets from unknown source (I did not mark them) and had such a hard time getting solder to stick it was very frustrating.

[stretch2011]

+1 Mouser

I use eyelets and I can buy 1000 for $30+ $7 shipped.

[NickC]

Hoffman

[Ron Worley]

Keystone turrets from Digikey- cheapest I've found when bought in 1000+ quantity.

[Matt D]

Thanks for all of the replies and input. I figured the CE turrets were made by Keystone but I guess not. I took the board to work today to try my luck with the Metcal soldering station there. By the time my coworker got the turret hot enough to flow some solder it melted the fiberglass board material and the turret was loose on the board. No bueno. I'm going to try my luck with the Watts split turrets. Steve, my project is an AB763 lite and your schematic and layout have been a big help. Thanks!

[guitarmike2107]

The gold plated ones are the same brass turret but with better plating and much better solder stick, I use gold and silver plated turrets for all my builds, they cost a little more but they work great.