eSCHEn
Bit Wrangler
- Messages
- 6,136
- Location
- SW Scotland
Utterly utterly fed up with traditional soldering irons and the dire performance they give I decided to get myself a new iron. I have been through a plethora of the standard type where you have a tip either inside or on top of a heating element. I hate the lack of tip temperature from the heating element being miles away and usually none to very little temperature monitoring.
I'm looking at you...
I had a look about and the Hakka T12 based series look fantastic but I'm cheap and don't want to pay fantastic prices for it Fortunately our friends on Banggood have a cloned version for only twenty quid. A nice neat little unit it is:
As seen from the rear shot it requires 16 .. 24VDC up to 3A. What this means in practise is the lower the voltage and amperage you give it the slower it heats up. With this in mind I grabbed a 24V 3.75A laptop style power adaptor from here with a DC plug to suit:
The "wand" assembly is very basic, little more than a non-conductive tube with the required bits inside. That being said the cable is a lovely flexible silicone type and very nice to use. The ubiquitous connector in a four-pin variant attaches the wand to the unit. Disassembly is very simple and the tips come in an assortment of ends to suit different jobs:
Inside of the wand is a reed switch which activates a configurable timer on the unit. The default is to turn off after five or seven seconds IIRC. Normally this would be a massive pain because the old units take so long to heat up but this is where the T12 is amazing in its performance. I've done a video but have no means of hosting it so you'll have to make to do with a screenshot. It took a couple of seconds to switch it on so you can subtract that from the time elapsed:
So in about 13 seconds it is hot enough to melt non-Pb based solder with no issues. It also maintains that temp perfectly. You'll have to take my word for it as I cannot get a photo close enough
Conclusion
Really impressed and happy with the unit's performance. I've not used it as much as I would have liked to have before posting this (only six months or so) but it's been excellent every time I used it.
Total price for setup with five tips and DC adaptor was about £45 all in. For that price I am very happy and would recommend to anyone.
Links to Product Pages
I had a look about and the Hakka T12 based series look fantastic but I'm cheap and don't want to pay fantastic prices for it Fortunately our friends on Banggood have a cloned version for only twenty quid. A nice neat little unit it is:
As seen from the rear shot it requires 16 .. 24VDC up to 3A. What this means in practise is the lower the voltage and amperage you give it the slower it heats up. With this in mind I grabbed a 24V 3.75A laptop style power adaptor from here with a DC plug to suit:
The "wand" assembly is very basic, little more than a non-conductive tube with the required bits inside. That being said the cable is a lovely flexible silicone type and very nice to use. The ubiquitous connector in a four-pin variant attaches the wand to the unit. Disassembly is very simple and the tips come in an assortment of ends to suit different jobs:
Inside of the wand is a reed switch which activates a configurable timer on the unit. The default is to turn off after five or seven seconds IIRC. Normally this would be a massive pain because the old units take so long to heat up but this is where the T12 is amazing in its performance. I've done a video but have no means of hosting it so you'll have to make to do with a screenshot. It took a couple of seconds to switch it on so you can subtract that from the time elapsed:
So in about 13 seconds it is hot enough to melt non-Pb based solder with no issues. It also maintains that temp perfectly. You'll have to take my word for it as I cannot get a photo close enough
Conclusion
Really impressed and happy with the unit's performance. I've not used it as much as I would have liked to have before posting this (only six months or so) but it's been excellent every time I used it.
Total price for setup with five tips and DC adaptor was about £45 all in. For that price I am very happy and would recommend to anyone.
Links to Product Pages
- Unit and Wand with "K" style tip - normal price is about £20
- Spare tips - normal price is about £10
- 24V adaptor no longer available from seller I used on eBay but you need 24V with at least 3A capacity to get fastest heating times. The DC input on my unit is 5.5mm x 2.1mm sized. Normal price is about £15.