Heat Set Insert Tips for Hakko (#4-40/M3 and M5)

3D Printing and Laser Cutting are awesome processes for making fast prototypes of complex parts but attaching those parts together can prove difficult. Glue works fine most of the time but only if you want a permanent bond. You can tap plastic parts and use bolts but the threads will be soft and probably won’t survive multiple assemblies. That’s where threaded inserts come in! Heat set inserts are metal (usually brass) nuts that are specially designed to be heated up and pressed into an undersized hole. The outside of the insert has spikes and fins that help the plastic flow around and form a tight bond with the surrounding material. The same effect can even be achieved (with a little less rigidity) using standard hex nuts.

Pressing inserts and hex nuts into a plastic enclosure is something that you can do with a standard soldering iron tip but if you ever want to use that tip for soldering again you had better be careful not to get plastic on it! Also, it seems some tips work better than others based on how well their shape transfers heat to the insert. These heat set insert tips solve those problems by giving you a dedicated tip for installing inserts! They’re designed to fit onto your Hakko FX-888 soldering iron and provide exactly the right sized post for pressing home a heat set insert! Each pack comes with two tips: One for #4-40/M3 inserts and a second for larger M5 inserts.

We do not plan to regularly produce SparkX products so get them while they’re hot! (Pun totally intended)