Anyone know how to replace Aoyue 9378 heating element?

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

Hi,

I have a 9378 and tonight it won’t heat up, and I get Err2. According to the manual, that means the heating element needs to be replaced.

It came with an extra heating element, but I can’t find ANY information about how to replace it.

Does anyone know how to do that?

Thanks,
Jim

2

Yours look anything like the below?

3

Unplug it from the base. Unscrew the tip retainer and remove it and any tip you might have on it. Holding the handle, unscrew the black plastic ring that has the metal tip retaining threads embedded in it. Once that’s off you gently push the cable through the handle exposing all of the solder connections. Now comes the tricky part, you need a functional soldering iron to desolder the old and resolder the new element boards. Hope this helps. I have the Yihua 938D but from the pictures the wands look similar.

4

Rufusbduck,

I’ve disassembled the pencil already, and that (having to desolder stuff and re-solder) was what I thought, and was worried about.

That seems a little silly… needing a soldering iron to replace a replacement part for the soldering iron :(?

In the case of the 9378, the element is just the element with some wires plus 2 exposed wires coming out of it. No board.

http://sra-solder.com/product.php/7169/0/c012_heating_element_for_soldering_iron_for_9378

So do I desolder the wires from the board that was in the handle and solder the wires from the new element?

Thanks,
Jim

5

It’s this one:

http://sra-solder.com/product.php/7113/0/aoyue_digital_soldering_station_9378

but the heating element goes into the pencil. My station itself seems to be working, but just the element inside the pencil is bad.

Thanks,
Jim

6

I opened mine up and the element has several wires that get soldered to a long narrow board that also has the cable wires soldered to it. Pretty sure you just remove the old element by desoldering the element wires and resolder in the new ones. It looks like you have to be very careful with the wire lengths to have them lay down smoothly against the board and fit back into the wand handle. Take several pics before you begin so you can verify the proper connections after.

7

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Aoyue+heating+element

8

Hi,

Thanks. I was just able to do the replacement. I still can’t believe that they expect you to do that, but I’m glad that it’s working again now. I think that the next time it goes bad, I may have to replace the whole pencil+cable ass’y (explain below).

As you said, there’s a long single-sided PCB that the 4 leads from the element has to be soldered into. In my case, there was one lead with blue insulation and another with gray insulation, and then 2 other leads that were bare stranded wire (fairly thick).

I matched the wire insulation color up with what was already soldered in and then tried to figure out which of the bare stranded wires went where. One of them has a short cloth-like sleeve and the other doesn’t so I went by that.

The through holes going down the board are in pairs. What I mean is that there are pairs of holes that are tied together.

The original wires went into one of the holes in a pair, and the other hole was left open… I’m guessing that is because that avoids having to desolder the wire before putting in the new wire.

So, I took advantage of that.

I cut the existing wires at the heating element end, so that the wires were still there and going to the right hole. Then, I routed the wires from the new heating element to the paired holes and made them taut, removing as much slack as possible so that, as you said, the wires would lay flat.

After double- and triple-checking, I then soldered in the new wires from the new heating element, then cut the remainders of the old wires off the board.

Then, I re-assembled the pencil, and powered the Aoyue up and held my breath… waiting to see what happened.

Voila! The display came on, and the display started climbing to my set temperature!!

That was it. I now have a soldering iron/station back again, at least until the next time.

Thanks for your help! The key was that you confirmed that I had to solder in the new heating element. As I said, that was something that I didn’t expect to have to do.

Jim

9

Hi,

I had seen those before I posted, but they were for Aoyue hot air guns or the one for the 968 was a resistor repair I think, even tho the video title mentions “heating element”.

Thanks,
Jim

10

I tend to change tips a few time each mod session and have considered just getting an extra wand rather than a spare element but don’t think I should be messing with the plug that often. I’m leaning towards just getting a spare element for now and maybe adding a reflow blower later. How long do elements last? Mine’s ~ 18 mos old.

11

When I was searching around, I found some place (maybe the SRA solder site) that say that the elements usually last about a year.

I also read that one thing that can cause an element to fail is screwing the tip in too tight (which I think is what I might’ve done).

12

There are replacement handles on eBay... No idea about the quality of those, but one might work for you.

13

Hi,

Do you have a link? I looked there also, but they all seemed to point back to SRA solder or “randyruby” (aka SRA Solder, I think).

14

Sorry, I just double-checked, and I don't think any of the handles on eBay would work for you due to the different pin configurations. FWIW, I searched for "soldering handle". I saw the replacement handle (part # B016) on SRA as well, but there doesn't seem to be anybody else selling it at this point. $24 + s/h seems a bit steep, but I suppose it could be worse.

15

The ceramic element is quite fragile and requires a little soldering to replace.

Banggood have cheap pens:

The DIN connector I would not worry too much about, they are generally pretty robust.