There was a time when a decent temperature controlled soldering iron took the form of the iron itself and a box of electronics, but now it’s just as likely to be a miniaturised affair with the temperature controller built into a slim and lightweight handle. Irons such as the Miniware TS series have become firm favourites, displacing a traditional soldering station for many.
[Thomas.lepi] has combined the best of both worlds, with a TS-style microprocessor-driven handle driving the familiar Weller RT elements. Its interface is very simple, but through its USB power socket a serial port provides opportunities for adjustment. Providing control is an STM32F042G6U6 ARM Cortex M0 microcontroller, with USB power control coming from an STUSB4500QTR .
If you are used to irons such as the Miniware TS100 then this one with its smartly 3D-printed case will be very straightforward to use. Whether or not the ready availability of the TS100 or its USB-C sibling would remove the need to build this iron is up to you, but then again that’s hardly the point. The Weller tips are some of the better ones of their type, so perhaps that might make this project worth a second look.
I have also simple soldering pen with small custom display and USB https://hackaday.io/project/162820-dixi-rt-usb-soldering-pen-for-weller-rt
From a glance at the project page, it looks like, similar to the TS80, it can only run from USB-C power supplies that can operate at 9v.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t played much with USB-C so I don’t know off the top of my head, will 20V laptop supplies be able to run this thing?
Did use a 24v brick to power my t12 soldering iron controller ( http://smdprutser.nl/project/70w-soldering-iron-controller/ )
But i guess an usb c powersupply is more mainstream now a days. Guess i should redesign the thing to use usb c.
Hi, I’m sorry for the late reply!
I’ve just tested the new batch of PCB’s with a 65W HP Laptop charger. No problem if the PD negotiation works on both sides.
Regards,
Thomas
With USB-C this could have some decent power, and I like the small form factor, but the silly 3 led UI make it instantly useless. I can not remember semperature settings for those things. I NEED eigher a display with numbers (Such as the TS-100) or a simple potentioneter with a dial and no display at all. I stopped the youtube video when they started showing tempeature settings by the leds. Yuch.