60 Watt USB Soldering Iron Does It With Type-C

February 24, 2017 by Anool Mahidharia 40 Comments

Some time back we ran a post on those cheap USB soldering irons which appeared to be surprisingly capable considering they were really under powered, literally. But USB Type-C is slated to change that. Although it has been around for a while, we are only now beginning to see USB-C capable devices and chargers gain traction. USB-C chargers featuring the USB-PD option (for power delivery) can act as high power sources allowing fast charging of laptops, phones and other devices capable of negotiating the higher currents and voltages it is capable of sourcing. [Julien Goodwin] shows us how he built a USB-C powered soldering iron that doesn’t suck.

He is able to drive a regular Hakko iron at 20 V and 3 Amps, providing it with 60 W of input power from a USB-C charger. The Hakko is rated for 24 V operating voltage, so it is running about 16% lower ~~power~~ voltage. But even so, 60 W is plenty for most cases. The USB-C specification allows up to 5 A of current output in special cases, so there’s almost 100 W available when using this capability.

It all started while he was trying to consolidate his power brick collection for his various computers in order to reduce the many types and configurations of plugs. Looking around, he stumbled on the USB-PD protocol. After doing his homework, he decided to build a USB Type-C charger board with the PD feature based on the TI TPS65986 chip – a very capable USB Type-C and USB PD Controller and Power Switch. The TI chip is a BGA package, so he had to outsource board assembly, and with day job work constantly getting in the way, it took a fair bit of time before he could finally test it. Luckily, none of the magic smoke escaped from the board and it worked flawlessly the first time around. Here is his deck of slides about USB-C & USB-PD [PDF] that he presented at linux.conf.au 2017 Open Hardware Miniconf early this year. It provides a nice insight to this standard, including a look at the schematic for his driver board.

Being such a versatile system, we are likely to see USB-C being used in more devices in the future. Which means we ought to see high power USB Soldering Irons appearing soon. But at the moment, there is a bit of a “power” struggle between USB-C and Qualcomm’s competing “Quick Charge” (QC) technology. It’s a bit like VHS and Betamax, and this time we are hoping the better technology wins.

Probably The Simplest Electronic Temperature Controlled Soldering Iron

November 4, 2016 by Jenny List 29 Comments

We’re all used to temperature controlled soldering irons, and most of us will have one in some form or other as our soldering tool of choice. In many cases our irons will be microprocessor controlled, with thermocouples, LCD displays, and other technological magic to make the perfect soldering tool.

All this technology is very impressive, but how simply can a temperature controlled iron be made? If you’re of an older generation you might point to irons with bimetallic or magnetic temperature regulation of course, so let’s rephrase the question. How simply can an electronic temperature controlled soldering iron be made? [Bestonic lab] might just have the answer, because he’s posted a YouTube video showing an extremely simple temperature controlled iron. It’s not the most elegant of solutions, but it does the job demanded of it, and all for a very low parts count.

He’s taken a ceramic housing from a redundant fuse holder, and mounted it on a metal frame to make a basic soldering iron holder into which the tip of his unregulated iron fits. To the ceramic he’s fitted a thermistor, which sits in the gate bias circuit of a MOSFET. The MOSFET in turn operates a relay which supplies mains power to the iron.

Temperature regulation comes as the iron heats the ceramic to the point at which the thermistor changes the MOSFET and relay state, at which point (with the iron power cut) it cools until the MOSFET flips again and restarts the process. You may have spotted a flaw in that it requires the iron to be in the holder to work, though we suspect in practice the thermal inertia of the ceramic will be enough for regulation to be reasonably maintained so long as the iron is returned to its holder between joints. Nobody is claiming that this temperature controlled iron is on a par with its expensive commercial cousins, instead it represents a very neat hack to conjure a useful tool from very few components. And we like that. Take a look at the full video below the break.

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How To Make Your Weller Wireless

September 1, 2016 by Charles Alexanian 47 Comments

On occasion I have encountered portable soldering irons and my impressions of them have ranged from nearly usable to total rubbish. While using a popular butane powered model and pondering if it was really any better than a copper wire and a candle a thought occurred to me. A regular old Weller station runs on 24 volts AC and performs all of its temperature regulation in a magnetically activated thermostatic fashion and all of that goodness occurs within the hand piece itself. It stood to reason that it could perform just as well with a DC source.

In this instance we are ignoring the negative effects of switching DC current over AC current on mechanical contacts. After all we are “In the Trenches” wherever we might have need for such a device. Using a couple of gel cell 12 volt 7 amp hour batteries freshly removed from a UPS I strung them up, and there you have it, a totally battery operated iron with performance equal to that of the one at my bench.

Connecting SMPS to the Weller Iron — Connecting Power to the Weller Iron

Right at 24 volts the iron Thermocycles at the same rate as it would be while using the bench top supply for it. Just sitting under no load it cycles about every ten seconds and there was no perceptible difference in heat capacity or performance. A fully charged pair of batteries will last all day. The on state current draw from a full charge (13.5 volts on each of the batteries) yielded about a 2 amp draw. As the voltage began to decrease the current off cycle would get shorter as one would expect, but no drop in heat transfer was noticed until the batteries were well depleted and that took most of a work day.

For this instance I used the hand piece from the venerable Weller WTCPT station. For ongoing use I would not recommend this due to the use of a mechanical contact within the unit and switching of DC can reduced the life of most mechanical switches. Currently I am awaiting the arrival of some cheap eBay Hakko handpieces; I am sure they are knockoffs, but fine to experiment with a simple PWM with a feedback loop controller as the basic Hakko design also utilizes a 24 volt source. An automatic shut off timer would also be handy to avoid premature battery abuse due to a forgetful operator.

Ugly DIY Portable Soldering Iron

July 26, 2016 by Al Williams 6 Comments

If you’ve ever wanted a battery-operated soldering iron and you just can’t stand the thought of buying one, you might check out the video below from [Just5mins]. In it, he takes a candy tube, some scrap materials, a lithium ion battery, a nichrome wire, a USB charger, and a switch and turns it into an apparently practical soldering iron.

Paradoxically, [Just5mins] used a soldering iron to build this one, so it probably can’t be your only soldering iron, although we suppose you could figure something out in a pinch. Maybe in rep-rap style, make a poor quality one with no soldering and use it to solder up the next one.

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Simple Beetle Robot Uses Smoking Soldering Iron

July 20, 2016 by Al Williams 34 Comments

As robot projects go, [creative ideas km]’s isn’t going to impress many Hackaday readers. Still, as an art project or something to do with the kids, it might be fun. But the reason it caught our interest wasn’t the actual robot, but the improvised soldering iron used in its construction.

The robot itself isn’t really autonomous. It is just a battery, a motor, and a switch. The motor vibrations make the robot scoot around on its bent copper wire legs. Some hot glue holds it all together, but the electrical wiring is soldered.

If you look at the video below, you’ll see the soldering is done with an unusual method. A disposable lighter generates a flame that hits an attached copper wire with a coil wound in it. The coil acts as a heat exchanger, and the wire becomes a soldering iron tip.

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Long-Term Review: Weller Magnastat Soldering Iron

June 1, 2016 by Jenny List 44 Comments

One of the things you find yourself doing as a young engineer is equipping yourself with the tools of your trade. These will be the foundations upon which your career is built in a way that a diploma or degree certificate will never be, for the best degree in the world is less useful if the quality of your tools renders you unable to capitalise upon it. You may be lucky enough to make some of them yourself, but others you’ll lust after as unaffordable, then eventually put the boat out a little to buy at the limit of your meager income.

Your bench may have a few of these lifetime tools. They could be something as simple as screwdrivers or you may have one of those indestructible multimeters, but in my case my lifetime tool is my soldering iron. At some time in 1992 I spent about £60($173 back then), a lot of money for a student, on a mains-powered Weller Magnastat. The World Wide Web was still fairly fresh from Tim Berners-Lee’s NeXT in those days, so this meant a trip to my university’s RS trade counter and a moment poring over a telephone-book-sized catalogue before filling in an order slip.

The Magnastat is a simple but very effective fixed-temperature-controlled iron. The tip has a magnet on its rear end which holds closed a power switch for the heating element. When the tip has heated to the Curie temperature of the magnet, it loses its magnetism and the switch opens. The temperature falls to below the Curie temperature and the magnetism returns, the switch closes, the tip warms up again, and the cycle repeats itself. The temperature of the tip is thus dictated by the magnet’s Curie temperature, and Weller provides a range of tips fitted with magnets for different temperatures.

The result is an iron with enough power to solder heat-sucking jobs that would leave lesser irons gasping for juice, while also having the delicacy to solder tiny surface-mount components without destroying them or lifting tracks. It’s not a particularly small or lightweight iron if you are used to the featherlight pencil irons from today’s soldering stations, but neither is it too large or heavy to be unwieldy. In the nearly quarter century I have owned my Magnastat it has had a hand in almost everything I have made, from hi-fi and tube amplifiers through radio transmitters, stripline filters, kits, and too many repairs to mention. It has even been pressed into service plastic-welding a damaged motorcycle fairing. It has truly been a lifetime tool.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A Cheaper Soldering Solution

May 7, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 32 Comments

Everyone goes through a few phases during their exploration of electrons, and nowhere is this more apparent than the choice of soldering iron. The My First Soldering Iron™ is an iron that plugs directly into the wall, and doesn’t have temperature control. They’re cheap, and electronics isn’t for everyone, giving the quitters the opportunity to take up woodburning as a hobby. The next step up is a temperature controlled iron, probably an Aoyue or Hakko. The best soldering iron? You’re looking at a Metcal or Weller, and your wallet will become a few hundred dollars lighter.

Your My First Soldering Iron™ need not be terrible, though. For his project for The Hackaday Prize, [HP] is working on a soldering iron that is cheap, accurate, and uses the very nice Weller RT tips. No, it’s not as good as a Metcal or proper Weller, but it’s good enough for some fine soldering work and will give the Aoyues and Hakkos a run for their money.

If price is a reasonable measure of the quality of a soldering iron, the irons that use these Weller RT tips are the best irons around. The tips, though, are pretty cheap: about $30, which gets you a heater and thermistor and not much else. There have been numerous reverse engineering efforts for this iron ([1] and [2]), and even a few Arduino-based circuits that replicate the functionality of the Weller base unit.

[HP] is going in a different direction to heat these iron tips. Instead of building a big box to hold the electronics, he’s building everything into the handle of the soldering iron. With brains donated from an ATMega168, a few op-amps, MOSFETS, and a single power jack, [HP] can heat up this soldering iron tip in a compact, hand-held unit.

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [HP] did a rundown of soldering pen in a video. You can check that out below.

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