Usually a soldering iron takes a couple of minutes to get adequately heated up to melt the solder, after which the heat generated is much above the requirement and is wasted. This is a design circuit for the solution of the problem. This is a heat limiter circuit that can be work automatically. This is the figure of the circuit;
Once the main is switched on, an approximate 15v drop of the positive half cycle across R5 is detected and supplied to Q1 (SL100 or D313), which acts as a voltage regulator. Zener diode D2 together with diode D3 (yellow LED) stabilizes the emitter voltage of Q1 at 13.2Vdc, which is then delivered to the relay circuit built around Q2 and C3. Capacitor C3 charges through the base-emitter path of Q2 and causes the relay to actuate, which in turn allows both the half cycles of the AC mains to flow through diode D6 and R5 to the load to heat it up at a normal rate.
After a certain lapse of time (about 2 minutes preset) C3 saturates and Q2 stops conducting through the relay, thus switching on series diode D5 to allow only half of the Ac cycle through the load. After switching off the system, C3 discharges very slowly through R2 and R3. Before C3 gets completely discharged, if the power is switched on again, C3 takes a shorter time to reach the saturation level, thus switching series diode D5 much earlier than the preset time to prevent double heating of the load.
However, if the circuit is switched on only after a few seconds of switching off, C3 gets no time to discharge and the relay does not actuate at all. Moreover, if the relay circuit fails due to any reason and Q2 does not conduct, no harm is done to the load because in that case D5 remains in series with it. Thus the circuit offers complete protection to the load.
As stated earlier, the given value of C3 gives a delay of 2 minutes. However, a 1000mfd capacitor can also be used to produce a 4.5-minute delay. R5 maintains a drop of about 15V across itself.
