Collaborate Disseminate
Over the past few years a new class of soldering iron has arisen: a temperature controlled iron no longer tied to a bulky mains-powered base station, but using low-voltage DC …read more Continue reading Review: Sequre SQ-D60 Temperature Controlled Soldering Iron
We’ve probably all seen USB soldering irons advertised for very little money, and concluded that they might not necessarily be the most useful of tools. The cheapest of these lack any real temperature regulation. Enter [Paulo Bruckmann], who has attached a thermistor to his iron with Kapton tape, added an Arduino Uno clone with rotary encoder and Nokia LCD, and put the result in a 3D printed case for a tiny and low powered temperature controlled soldering station. The claimed cost is only $10, which seems credible given the low price of Arduino clones.
The software provides the expected PID …read more
Continue reading Retrofit Temperature Control to a Soldering Station
It’s an entertaining pastime when browsing the array of wonders available from the other side of the world at the click of the mouse, to scour the listings of the unusual, the interesting, or the inexpensive. Sometimes when you find something unexpected you are rewarded with a diamond in the rough, while at other moments your bargain basement purchase is revealed as a hilariously useless paperweight. This is a game in which the stake is relatively low and the reward can be significant, so rarely does an order for some parts or sundries go by without a speculative purchase.
The …read more
Continue reading Review: CXG E90W Temperature-Controlled Soldering Iron
Temperature-controlled soldering irons can be cheap, lightweight, and good. Pick any two of those attributes when you choose an iron, because you’ll never have all three. You might believe that this adage represents a cast-iron rule, no iron could possibly combine all three to make a lightweight high-performance tool that won’t break the bank! And until fairly recently you’d have had a point, but perhaps there is now a contender that could achieve that impossible feat.
The Miniware TS100 is a relatively inexpensive temperature-controlled soldering iron from China that has made a stealthy entry to the market, and which some …read more
