Hacking a Youyue-858d hot-air rework station

That looks interesting,
just ordered that exact station for 34€/43$ shipped and might try that exact mod.

BTW here is the link to the relating eevblog thread.

That should give a great value hot air rework station.
I hope it saves me a lot of time and parts as I don’t have to strugle with a soldering iron and all those small smd parts and subpar LED reflows.

oh you will be amazed at the ease of soldering SMD components w/ a hotair station vs an iron…night and day (just don’t turn the heat up way too much, I set mine for 300C and slowly heat the part, too much and it ends up heat damaging the component :frowning: )

Very cool find Texaspyro….thanks!

I just checked my YiHUA 858D and its not the same, doesnt even appear do be a direct clone either and the iC definitely isnt an Atmel. Thats to bad, this looked like an awesome upgrade.

I have just received one of these units. The transformer has a 2014 date code (edit: board date code is 20140415) and the board shows version 6.0 so I believe it is a up to date build. The manufacturer has updated the programming to give a live temperature display while running instead of just showing the set-point as shown in the blog. It still has the issue where it heats back up without reactivating the fan after going into “power down”. I have an Atmel processor that will fit it so I am going to pursue the upgrades as shown in the blog referenced in the first post.

I do not have any experience with using hot air units, when I worked in a board shop they used irons for SMD rework so either hot air use was not popular then (1999 - 2000) or the shop I worked for just did not have them. I myself have been using an old Weller EC4001. I did take the unit apart before powering it up the first time and removed the paint under all of the case ground points and mounting screws. I have yet to do any board work with this unit, but it appears to heat up fast and in looking at similar units I believe this to be a good value station, especially after the upgrades which will cost less then $5.

UPDATE: I have successfully performed the mods as outlined in the previously mentioned blog. The results seems to be a very usable budget tool.

Unit (SI858D) was $42.99 (free shipping from California) from Amazon. Mod parts consist of a ATMEGA168PA ($3.45), one 1 ohm 1% 0805 resistor ($0.27 each, I bought 10), a piece of wire/heat shrink tube (free from parts bin), and a 1.2k half watt through hole resistor (free from parts bin, did not have/could not find a 1k or 1.1k). Total was around $50 - $51 (with estimated taxes and shipping on components, I ordered some other stuff as well). Only changes I made are that I did not use the Oshpark breakout board so I ran the fan sense wire to pin 1 of the unused J5 connector.

EDIT: Github location of authors files
I used file “2014-12-07_commit-a18f02c4ATmega168-8MHz-RC-oscFUSES-0xE2-0xDD-0xFD_V1.33-WDT.hex” with fuses L: 0xE2 H: 0xDD E: 0x05

I am excited to try this to re-flow an emitter on a noctagon, I think it will be much better then using my iron. I do not think the fan current sense mod is absolutely necessary. Adding current sense is better then the existing voltage sense, but it still would not be able to detect a stalled fan. I believe the author of this mod referred to this and was looking into adding commutation detection, but I am unsure if he is still going to look into it.

Just to let you guys know: I will probably not add the commutation sensing for the BLDC fan motor. I do have a prototype for it, but it is a bit fiddly, needs proper adjusting (preferably with a scope) and is not absolutely necessary.

I think the device is usable and reasonably safe as far as over-temperature shutdown is concerned.

Have fun with it.

Robert

Yep, I found out about these and bought two and firmware modded them both. They are nothing short of miraculous now. Veyr fast and easy to use. No worries about it overheating. Just clean power and heat with accurate readings.

I'm thinking of selling my second one that I have for a backup.. In a box as new complete. Except for the new Atmel chip programmed and installed with the new firmware..

Are any of these mods possible , or even useful , for a Yihua 858 with nobs on :stuck_out_tongue: .I bought mine last year on Ali , code on the rear;YH-CE2007031-812 (2007?).

Pop it open and lets have some pictures.

jhalb no longer has an extra reflow station. He does have a pretty much mint M6 option 2 from Mountain Electronics on the way though. :bigsmile:

I guess I’ll just have to try using my wife’s old griddle (that mysteriously disappeared from the kitchen :wink: ) and a 110v burner/hot plate to reflow my leds.

That works too....most of the time better than you'd think.

I took off the front of the analogue 858.
The phone camera isn’t great , but the ic in the middle is a Texas Instruments LM324 , not an Atmel Mega.
On the other side of the board , it is marked YH858BDV3 so analogue version 3 , and from what I understand , people are upgrading the digital board version 6.In reality , it is working fine , the limiting factors are my skills.Thanks for looking anyway.

I sold my original 858D station from Yihua (that uses an incompatible Samsung processor) and bought a Youyue (with the rev 6 PCB). Flashed the DIY firmware into a mega328 chip (it was compiled for a mega168) and it works fine. I think I’ll mod the code to be able to display temps in degrees F…

That would be a cool firmware mod! I mean hot.

I just received my YOUYUE 858D+ and the behaviour was a bit strange. After a bit of research on the net, I found this. Upgrade the firmware is the way to go!!

When I opened it i noticed that it comes with ATmega8 on a ver 6 (20140415). DO I need to change to a ATmega168 in order to use the custom firmware, or I just re-compile ? If a new micro processor ATmega168 (or atmega328 woudl have any advantage?) is needed, which model should I get ?

Thanks.

All I did was follow the instructions exactly. It took several resets to get it to start working. I forget which chip I used, I think it was the 168. If you use a different chip(328) you must make certain all of the pin registers are in the correct place. I decided to keep the old firmware on the old chip that way if something went wrong at least I could put the old chip back in. Yes, use a new chip(168) and keep the old one just in case. Be prepared for it to not work correctly right away. The eeprom needs to be internally loaded with operating parameters from the board itself. When you get ready to start it for the first time PM me. And start with the fan setting in mid position. Your board has the exact same date code as mine.

Mine had a ’168 chip on it. I just programmed the replacement firmware HEX file into a ’328 (I had them handy). I did not recompile it. It worked just fine. The ’328s that I had had the fuses set up for a crystal oscillator. I had to kludge up my programming adapter with a crystal in order to reprogram them to use the internal oscillator.