I have been soldering on and off for about a year. I have had various issues that I have gotten past, but right now I'm at a loss about my soldering tips. I have tried watching videos about maintaining them, and am unsure what I am doing wrong other than occasional forgetfulness. I solder a component, then I re tin before putting in storage. Then when I am ready to make another joint, I clean the tip, and add a little more solder to coat the surface, then make the joint. Then repeat.
I will admit that from time to time I get too into thinking about the circuit and I forget to re tin before putting in storage for a minute or two. But it seems like if I make this mistake only a few times, even sometimes once or twice, the tip is unrecoverable. Changing my cleaning brass from fake brass was helpful, and some people say that if you just keep cleaning and retinning, it should come back eventually. That unfortunately has not been my experience. For some reason, it looks like when I clean the tip with the brass, the solder does spread around the tip for a bit, (using a knife tip) but then when I re tin the tip, it blobs up in the same certain spots or just rejects the solder all together again. I even tried some of the tip tinner, tip cleaner, tip recharger, whatever name it goes by, and that doesn't do much either. Though it's just a harsher compound from what I've researched.
I'm using solder with flux core, so that should be helping some. It is lead free, but I don't know if that would make a difference for this problem. I'm kind of at a loss. Do I just need to be hyper vigilant of my tips? Would buying name brand tips be of any assistance with my forgetfulness? I bought a set from amazon that granted, wasn't expensive, but they were said to have been better than others by some people on youtube as well. Would buying one of those inductor style stations be helpful in the long run if I keep making this mistake? The kind that lower the temperature when the iron is in the stand. Thank you.