This was started in the Q8 thread, but it was suggested that it be discussed in it’s own thread so as not to get buried among a gazillion posts. Good idea The Miller!
Ultimately the discussion lead me to retry to find the old style Sal Ammoniac tip cleaning block. I had some time and tried finding it on Amazon and Ebay. I was successful and have no idea why I wasn’t successful in the past. It came right up. On ebay I got a 1lb block for under $20 shipped. Amazon was 2x the price for an 8 oz block. There were 4oz blocks also but I despise paying just as much to ship an item as to buy it inexpensively. I’ll never misplace a 1# block of it.
this is the latest product I bought and use, has amazing build quality for the price and has been running for a couple months now. LED reflowing is super easy with it, takes only seconds.
It does indeed look quite nice. Please forgive the stupid question but do you blow air on the LEDs or below the MCPCB? And is there anything you can’t do with one of those that you can do with an iron? I’m looking to replace my old underpowered iron and I’m not sure yet if I should go for a soldering station or hot air. I don’t really do enough soldering to justify having both. Just some occasional flashlight assembly and toy repair, although I would eventually like to put together a driver or two from scratch.
@ fixed it
If you only want to get one station go and get an iron. You can do more with it. The hotair is nice to have. Its easy to desolder things with a hotair and reflowing a driver with a hotair is also nice. But most drivers could also be put together with a iron. The hotair makes things easyer sometimes.
I got a cheap one (YOUYUE 858D+ ~40:money_mouth_face: and then i got a new mcu with complete new firmware (http://blog.spitzenpfeil.org/wordpress/projects/youyue-858d-hotair-station-modifications/). Makes it a lot more save and presize. The standart cheap china hotair could easy overshot 50°c and more. With the new chip (if i remember right it was ~15€) this is all gone.
Guys…. please post some links to these good deals you know about and are mentioning, as well as the things you use and like. That way we can check them out & know for sure we are looking at what you mentioned.
Well
some background at first.
I did not use my soldering staff often so had only cheap Chinese iron with solid cooper tip for a long.
Then I was presented with Yihua 939d
The price was about 30USD.
It was much better that previous. But still not as good as I expected. And after some research I desided to go for T12 soldering irons
After maybe 6 months I caught flash sale for Bakon BK950D
For about 14USD it was must have.
There were still some issues with usability (buttons was definitely not the best solution there) and performance (less powerfull that stated 75W). But still it was better than 939d.
The only thing I did not owe was hor airgun. And as far as i was about to build several custom drivers for SRK I started looking for it.
While searching I’ve found few very inspiring reviews on STM32 based soldering stations from taobao.
The latest one is 2in1 iron/airgun controller but all agreed that it is not the best choice now, way too expensive. And it is better to have 2 separate stations.
You can follow the links and check photos and/or use google translator to read some ysefull info.
I’ll try to put main info in a nutshell:
Soldering Iron:
- price is about 45USD + shipping for complete set (controller board, psu, box, soldering iron…)
- AL box ~150х88х38mm
- stm32 based controller board
- 72W+ PSU
- T12 handle
- OLED screen
A lot of features:
- temperatures 150÷480 ℃
- Cold junction compensation 9÷99 ℃
- PID temp control
- standby, sleep, boost mode
- temp 3 point calibration for your tips
- tips databases with presets
- clock
- buzzer
screensaver lol
Hot airgun:
- price is about 50USD + shipping for complete set (controller+psu board, box, airgun handle…)
- AL box ~150х88х38mm
- stm32 based controller board with integrated PSU
Hakko FX-888D soldering station
Hakko FX-901 battery powered soldering iron
Hakko 808 desoldering tool
Weller WESD51 soldering station
Weller WM 120 12 watt soldering iron
Weller 100P 100 watt temperature controlled soldering iron
Sparkfun 808D hot air SMD rework station.
I’ve been building audio kits since the late 60’s. Most of it professionally working as a technician in a stereo store, and then working in the printing industry fixing DC motor controllers and control circuits. I’ve been retired since 2013. Since then, I’m not as active a I used to be. I still fix tubed audio equipment on occassion. Mostly for myself and a few freinds.