We are up to our 5th generation of soldering station. We have switching over to the "Yihua 937", it's a Chinese clone of a "Hakko 936", with the pin connector M/F reversed on the iron and base unit. 

The weight of the solder station effects the shipping cost, and the to-our-door cost. We found HobbyKing the cheapest supplier, and they have US warehouses. The name of the product on HobbyKings website is "Soldering Station Adjustable Heat Range with US Plug" We have paid between $25 and $35 (to the door) for the irons we have purchased. 

For tip cleaning, the wet sponges are evil and novice users destroy tips with them.

You can buy commercial tip cleaning jars for $5, We use our own (cheap less then $1) version using a babyfood jar and stainless steel sponge.

Our last buy of lamps were from Target, they came without the bulb.

We are moving to LED light bulbs, most of units still have compact fluorescent. When we started we used Incandescent Bulbs and had to watch out for hot light hoods and how much power we were consuming from the outlet.