I had great luck reviving some tips using a wire wheel on my bench grinder. You just have to be careful to not overdo it and heat through the coating completely and you have to get the tip tinned AS SOON as it heats up, be touching the tip with solder while it is heating and cover the entire tip as fast as possible.
Takes a little work to re-season the tip after this but it did work as a last resort.
Yeah it’s still a nice light, but they are over representing it by a large margin by saying it’s a 3800 lumen light. And even more so when the battery they supply with it will only take it to 75% of their rating.
What is physically different about the Antex tips (or Hakko) that made them work better? A higher amount of copper core and thinner coating? Maybe the coating itself?
I don’t think any of my issues with the 995D soldering station have to do with tip cleanliness. It works great at small stuff like smd boards and such. I know how to clean the tips and prep them, no issues there. It’s just on heavy loads, such as solder blobbing a cell or soldering on a big copper mcpcb, that it doesn’t have enough power to do it or do it fast enough. It’s like instead of it being an 80w iron, it feels like I’m back using a small 35w iron. It lacks the oomph! :disappointed: lol
With the Chisel point Hakko and a $20 Chinese knock off Hakko station I can solder the big P60 triple pills —crank it up to 850 —it takes a little while to get that much mass hot but I get it done
I’m drawn to that Miboxer C4-12, seems like exactly what I’m looking for. When I get the NW Giggle Monster I’ll then be able to charge all 8 at once, and pour the amps into the D4S’ 26650’s if I need a quicker charge like you say. I’m never in too much of a hurry to finish charging, but it would be nice to be able to speed things up if desired or required alright. Thanks again for the tips and insight!
Almost forgot…thanks to TA for making these tubes available! Reading through the thread it looks like there were a few challenges along the way that I missed out on, and I’m glad such a simple, consistent, plug and play system made it through to add another fun aspect to the hobby.
Mine has been acting a little slow lately, its a china knock off solder hot air station. I was about to replace my heating element with a authentic Hakko model until I took it apart and checked to see if it was good. It all checked out good so I just cleaned it up a little and freshened up the solder connections and everything seems fine now. This is how you test it. https://www.hakkousa.com/files/index/download/id/16989/
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From what I read a week or so ago the original hakko tips have a tighter tolerance to the element. The china copy’s ran into problems trying to fit all their models so they enlarge the hole in the china tips so they worked with all. This extra space in the hole of the tip cause less heat transfer and slower heat up times. Some have used thin copper foil wrapped around the element to take up slack and from their responses seems to improved the china tips. From all the response I saw the original hakko tips worked best. I dont have any original hakko tips to check but maybe someone else here can check the size of the hole and report back. I do have china tips and can check the size. You probably need a index drill bit set to get a close measure then check the size of the drill bit that fits with calipers.
The tolerance between the heating element and the tip is something I didn’t think about. That makes a lot of sense. I may play around with that later and see if makes a difference.
Yep, the tolerance is a big part of it, the Hakko tip fits much tighter. I did the wrap some foil around the element to improve the china tips prior to this and while it helped, it was still inferior to the Hakko by a fair margin.
The core design of the Hakko tips is a lot better. Which when you consider that a single Hakko tip costs more then a set of 5-10 China tips, I would expect nothing less.
Whatever it is, my soldering became so much easier after getting the real tips, I just wish I had got them years ago but for some reason people said you could not use them on the china stations. They were wrong.
TC20 NW measured with a professional sphere (ISP1000) : here
(3576 lm at Turbo, 1687 lm at High, don’t know if measured at 0s or 30s)
The TA tube itself is pretty good, but the lux meter can be a possible cause of measurement differences. You may try different lux meters installed and see how the relative brightness (e.g., Turbo lux value / High lux value) can vary simply because of that
Yes, the lux meter does have a tint bias, NW and WW emitters will read lower then CW due to this. Besides this they have been pretty good compared to even higher end meters in my experience.
A drill bit size of .1595” fits super tight. So that equates to 4.051mm with all my different china tips and checked with the calipers. Even bought tips from different places, still the same size. So yeah, Hakko tips have a tighter tolerance.
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The new Hakko heating element (Supposed to be hakko) I just purchased and the china element both measure .149” or 3.78mm. No difference in size with the elements if mine is a Oem hakko.
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Sorry TA for taking over your thread here, caught on to something interesting here, Wouldn’t be BLF if someone didn’t derail the thread at least once.
