I recently bought a desoldering iron from Parts Express (PE) -- model J-045-DS.
Then I bought a replacement tip at Radio Shack (RS).
I just wanted to tell you guys that the parts do work together, but there is one thing to note:
The threaded part on the tip that came with my PE desoldering iron, is about 0.95mm longer than the threading on the replacement tip i bought from Radio Shack. Which means that once i use the RS tip with this iron, i may get solder in the threads that will block screwing any future (longer-threaded) PE tips.
I suppose you could just heat the iron, and then screw in the PE tip, but then you'd probably have to heat it also to remove it... could be messy i guess.
The PE tips are about $9 for a pack of two, and the RS tips are only $2 for one tip.
If anyone else has any experience, or useful info mixing these parts, please add to this thread!
Part numbers:
Parts Express:
J-045-DS (iron)
JT-103 (tip)
Radio Shack:
64-2060 (iron)
64-2061 (tip)