Category Archives: diy soldering iron

Tetris on a Soldering Iron

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Our commenteers have all said good things about the open-source TS100 soldering iron pencil: things like “it solders well”. But we’ve all got soldering irons that solder well. What possible extra value does having open-source firmware on a soldering iron bring? [Joric] answered that question for us — it can play Tetris. (Video embedded below.)

While that’s cool and all, it wasn’t until we were reading through the README over at GitHub that the funniest part of this hack hit us. Every time you lose a game, the iron tip temperature increases by 10 degrees. Tetris for masochists? The makings …read more

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DIY Induction Soldering Iron

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[Kasyan TV] shows us how to make a really simple DIY induction soldering iron complete with DIY soldering tips.

This is a pretty cool project. Most of us are used to temperature controlled ceramic heating elements, but there are other ways to get those irons up to temperature. Using scraps from older, presumably broken, soldering irons and some pieces of copper and iron along with a thermocouple for temperature management, [Kasyan TV] manages to throw together an Inductively heated soldering iron. To insulate the coil from the iron they use Kapton tape. The video goes on to show how to …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: OLED Displays For Soldering Iron Tips

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Having soldered one end of a wire to a switch, you move on to the next step in your hack, soldering the other end of the wire to the more temperature sensitive pin 11 on the 6847 video chip. You set the soldering pen’s target temperature to something lower. You position the end of a tinned wire just so, with the solder held between the ring and pinky fingers of the same hand. You stare hard at the pin while you still know which one it is. Luckily this soldering pen has a display in the handle, close enough for …read more

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Turn cheap USB soldering irons in to tweezers

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This is 2016, and almost every hacker dabbles with SMD parts now, unlike back in the day. This means investing in at least some specialized tools and equipment to make the job easier. One handy tool is the SMD soldering tweezers – useful not only for manual soldering of parts, but also for de-soldering them quickly and without causing damage to the part or the board. Often, especially when repairing stuff, using a hot air gun can get tricky if you want to remove just one tiny part.

[adria.junyent-ferre] took a pair of cheap £5 USB soldering irons and turned …read more

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