Appreciate all the work your putting into this adventure!
Do you know if anyone has used your lube kit to lube a topre board?
i've played around with using 206 on a topre keychain. it actually makes a huge difference, especially because the type heavens come unlubed - the realforces have silicone grease from the factory. you want a really really weird mix compared to cherry switches though. you basically want like a tiny tiny bit of 1506 against a huge huge amount of 206. something ridiculous like 20 parts 206 to one part 1506. the basic idea is that the 1506 helps keep the seal between the mat and the pcb fairly airtight, but what really makes a difference, and the reason why they use silicone lube on the realforces, is that you actually want something really thick around the stem to help stabilize the stem (almost like an MX switch sticker) and to help make a better gas-tight-ish seal at the stem. the silicone grease they use migrates quite a bit and hence has a fairly limited lifespan. this is one of the major reasons why used topre boards will measure significantly different on actuation force than brand new ones. the rubber mat is very possibly a fluorinated FKM and extremely stable, but the stem assembly is not nearly the same, otherwise it wouldn't even need to be lubed. as such, it's subject to much larger tolerances that the grease can help by filling in.
as far as the mixing and dispensing kit is concerned, the tentative BOM is:
nalgene PP leakproof sample containers, 125ml
package of ptfe bearings. why ptfe? extremely easy to clean without solvents or other potential contaminants, and if the ptfe balls shed any material, it will happily mix in with the 206, which IS ptfe + pfpe oil
luer lock dispenser bottles, 1oz. you may know these from such hits as "limmy's krytox buy". they are not good mixing containers because they leak like crazy
more luer lock 5ml syringes
14ga large bore steel needle for fillling syringes and/or dispenser bottles with your mix
a selection of small gauge flexible needles for applying grease. in practice i've found that the 27ga steel needles bend so much that i'm just going to start buying the flexible 25ga needles instead
one thing i've been keeping an eye on is the possibility of getting some taper tips as well. i personally don't like them, but if your mix ratio is as above (0.1:25 or something insane like that), none of the small bore needles are going to help you dispense. you may need a very large bore taper tip.
very likely the dispenser kit will evolve as people work with it. that said, the foundation will always be a nice leakproof shatterproof bottle (either nalgene scientific or chemware, always) and ptfe bearings for agitation.
nothing wrong with an 888d. i use one and will continue to use one for low power work as long as it holds up (which will be forever, frankly). that said, it's not the best iron for a brand new solderer, frankly. the higher power is great because it lets you get away with soldering incorrectly, using tips that are smaller than you should be using or just kind of jabbing things with it to solder when you're feeling lazy. it's also great if you own like a grand in temp measurement equipment and can calibrate it yourself. there are myriad things i don't like about it for newbie use though. the heating element is exposed for one and i can't even remember the number of times i've gone to change a tip and ended up burning myself on the thing; the ceramic also requires regular cleaning with strong solvents. it's also possible and not that hard to mis or de-calibrate because the UI is so primitive.
and then there are the little things. you have a wet cleaning pad and a dry cleaning pad on the same stand. this is great for me because i know when to use which. it's terrible for a new user. what the heck is a new user supposed to do with this setup? they're going to end up thermally shocking the heater on the wet pad when they don't need to, and getting huge globs of solder into the dry cleaner, which destroys the dry cleaner quickly. there's also the fact that it's frankly a heck of a lot bulkier than it needs to be for a single alloy iron, and there are so many tips offered that half the questions in the soldering thread are "i just got a hakko what the heck do i put on it?!?".
finally, it's a pretty big investment, especially for international users, and everyone else who has to navigate their way through the usual hakko maze of "is it actually genuine? did it actually pass QC?", not just for the iron, but for the tips, and every other part involved.
for me and many of the other experienced users on this site, everything i mentioned above is ezpz. but what i do is remember myself using my first tandy 25w pencil and the crap conical tip it came with and burning the crap out of literally everything. i remember using a hot air gun and gravity to desolder full boards at once and then just replacing all the ICs, because none of them would work after hitting those temps. i remember all the stupid crap i did because i didn't have any guidance, and i want to do what i can to help make the road a bit easier for other people who approach this and other hobbies with a bit less of a devil-may-care attitude than i was a kid, and get them up to speed as quickly as possible.
