Non melty soldering iron leads

[radioman]

I was prompted to do this my the discovery of several soldering irons that had just passed PAT testing (external firm) with melted leads.

I thought there was a requirement for some sort of inspection rather than just plugging the thing in a magic box & pressing a button.

Those irons should not have passed if they had damaged mains leads - a large part of the P.A.Test is a visual inspection.
When I worked as a tech. at the local college I had to test everything in our department and the earth bonding plus insulation tests should only be done after the visual inspection.
Clearly the external firm were simply doing a 'box ticking' exercise....

As for damaged/melted mains leads, certain students just love to damage equipment.... like you, our mains soldering irons had their leads changed to burn-proof types but when we replaced those irons with some Weller low-voltage irons which had silicone leads as standard, they started melting holes into the PSU cases instead!

Andy