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Disclaimer: not sure if the question is on-topic here, but I'm not sure that any other community is better suited. If there is one, would you kindly direct me there?

Background: I am looking into buying an SMD rework station. Most of the ones I can afford are either crap or decent, provided they have been properly calibrated.

So, I'm looking into calibrating them. I realize the ideal would be to use a certified and accurate thermometer with a K-type thermocouple. Amazon is plagued in cheap thermometers of all kinds, most of which are wildly inaccurate.

So I'm thinking... supposing I could find another type of thermometer (say, a candy/oil immersion thermometer) that is reliable, could I use this to calibrate my equipment? (both the iron tip and the hypothetical hot air gun), or is there anything in the design/form factor of these kind of thermometers that could render them inappropriate for my intended use case?

Gregorio Litenstein
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    Many multimeters have a thermocouple capability. – Solar Mike Sep 21 '23 at 18:55
  • Can a candy thermometer even measure a high enough temperature? All the ones I see only go up to 200C which is not enough to measure irons or hot air guns being used with leaded solder. You could just calibrate your iron to a small piece of solder. That's probably the most accurate. And that little piece of solder can be-reused for the same purpose. – DKNguyen Sep 21 '23 at 19:40
  • @SolarMike That was my first thought, but even reasonably good brands of multimeter are plagued with reviews specifically saying the temperature measurement is very inaccurate. – Gregorio Litenstein Sep 21 '23 at 21:18
  • @DKNguyen well it depends, they usually go to 250ºC or so (obviously I if I can find one that goes higher, it would be better) but either way low/mid-end stations are usually calibrated by a potentiometer, or in the case of my Hakko iron, via the interface but it's still a 1-point calibration so I'd just have to set it to a lower temp for the measurement, I guess. – Gregorio Litenstein Sep 21 '23 at 21:20

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