PCBWay 3D Printing and Fabrication: www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyping/ Mechanic C211 on Aliexpress: s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DBR2zf9 Pico Technology 5000 Series Scope: www.picotech.com/oscilloscope/5000/flexible-resolution-oscilloscope Support the Channel with Patreon: www.patreon.com/sdgelectronics
Hi Steve, we must warn you (from eevblog forum) that somebody very recently took apart the Aixun T3a handle, and found the construction inadequate inside. So the assessment of this yellow handle here - should be treated with some similar level of caution. Because externally the handle does perhaps looks and feels great. However this does not show internally the materials used and how. For example relating to those longer term durability of contacts. In specific the Aixun handle (T245 style) was discovered to use aluminum contacts held inside of plastic channels. And the plyability of the plastic can then let transmits beinding into the aluminium, which then may indeed gets bent out of shape and plastically deformed. But also the bare aluminum was commented to also perhaps have sparking / arcing deposition issue. This isn't necessarily some death sentence, but it can mean some percentages of people encounter issues, or that some servicing or maintenance or more delicate handling. Which needs to be cautiously observed, and appropriately if diagnosing specific issues. Or when considering the value add to buy seperately some official handle from JBC instead.
Would that be for the green handles or their new blue ones? I was considering getting an aixun t3a because it's at an attractive price for 200w of power for a cheap station. I haven't seen or heard many complaints on it 🤔 would a regular jbc 245 handle work on it? I'm assuming that at that point, a conversion would be needed since the pinouts look different.
Good to see that the transformer is 230V, I was a bit concerned when I saw the 220V label on the rear with the UK being a 240V country and there have been quite a lot of issues historically with 220V products, especially with transformers and capacitors. Looks a really well made soldering station. I might have to pick one of these up to play with.
Great video, Steve. I do like the Mechanic branded products. I find their solder to be particularly useable. An excellent Soldering Station. It's good product at a great price. Thanks for sharing with us.
Man I was really looking forward to you grabbing the T245 version. I've been watching your videos alot as of recently because I want to get a decent station setup for the t245. I use a hakko 888d that I love but in some cases when I need it, it doesnt provide me with enough juice for the large ground plains or bigger areas with larger joints it struggles on me. As per your recommendation I have bought a genuine 245 cartridge and also the rubber boot cap that stops the flux vapors from getting in. Just waiting on a decent station without having to break the bank on a jbc since I repair on a hobbyists level but do enjoy owning professional equipment.
would have been better if they put a resistor in-line with the earth to the 4mm socket and the tip if it's earthed. I do like the Weller idea of a 3.5mm jack so you can put a resister in the supplied plug and give the iron tip what ever resistance to earth you like, or isolate it completely by plugging in a plug with nothing inside. But nice to see a twin bobbin transformer so at least the low voltage side should never come into contact with the mains. shame the pre-sets could wear out the memory if you keep changing the values.
@@jaro6985 not a problem in the UK we fuse our plugs, about time the rest of the world caught up. Not sure were you get the fact that tips should be earthed. The power to the handle should be isolated from the mains supply so exposed metal doesn't need to be earthed,. So the tip should be treated like a antistatic mat with just a bleed away resistor to earth. The problem with static is if you have charged up you pcb by handling it and then touching it with your earthed tip you could damage the part connected to the pad. A lot of these soldering stations need an earthed tip is because the mains isolation is so dodgy they could be a death trap in waiting.
@@davadoff I think it's a problem if you don't have any ESD protection. As if the component on the board has been charged up by being handled and you place an earthed tip on the pin. it's a fast higher current discharge which could damage the part. I prefer the tip to be like the ESD mat to be connected to earth through a high resistance. Also means that when I working on live equipment the iron is not a good earth path should I touch it even when it's off.
I just noticed these online , I saw the c210 dual iron . You get 2 c210 Irons , only £95 . There a cool hot air station too . There stuff looks pretty good .
One diode will get hotter which lowers its forward voltage and increases the current through that diode. That makes it even hotter which lowers forward voltage, increases current even more which makes it even hotter. Parallel diodes need to be in the same package like two one one TO220 package.
Interesting. Shortly after Louis Rossmann just posted a video about JBC's awful practice of selling DDE-1C stations missing the functionality that is advertised for them. For the amount of money you pay for their (JBC) stations you'd think they'd be better, I guess not. What next? subscription soldering stations / hot air ?
The back PCB has an earth wire soldered directly to it. I guess there is a PCB trace going to the connector for the iron. 20:11 I don’t understand why noise in the heater voltage makes noise in the temperature reading from sensors at least 30-60mm away… Unless the tip is earthed and heater current is flowing out of the tip to an earthed surface because a ground loop is created (like with the Aixun T3A)?
@@davadoff The test board ground plane is at least well capacitively coupled to the measurement circuit. So it makes sense that the noise can get to it. Could be ground loop type effect, yeah.
JBC calls the T210 a "20W handpiece". I don't know what they actually drive them at (their base is rated for 40W), but the clone C210 I have will push about 50W into a tip at 12Vdc, higher at 20Vdc. This seems to be common. I have no idea if the lifespan is significantly affected or not yet from my use... Its overkill for a tip of this size and geometry as you say. 40W is plenty.
The station design approach is rather strange. There are primarily two heater control approaches for a single channel cartridge based soldering station. The first is AC heater control using a large step down transformer (usually also having a separate output winding for the logic supply), and the second, DC heater control, where the heater supply is DC derived from a universal switching design without the large step down transformer. To use a large transformer and then a power switcher for DC heater control is very strange and costly. The obvious issue with the large transformer is your design is not universal mains. As such, like for the JBC compact line (Pace does something similar), you will see three AC mains offerings; 100VAC, 120VAC and 230VAC, using dual frequency 50/60 Hz power transformers. The paralleled device bridge can be made from SiC Schottky Barrier Rectifier Diodes, to essentially spread out the heat over the PCB and share current. However, this is an expensive solution. If not SiC you can pair match regular Schottky Barrier Rectifying Diodes, and if both are at the same temperature (close together / track together with temperature) they tend to do the job at very low forward voltages. But why are they there to begin with? Why not just run the heater from AC? Another strange design choice is to not put more useful information (use color more effectively) on the graphic display and the displays basic layout in general. The screen graphic on the bottom of the screen is the same as the buttons. Why would you waste this screen area with a static label? The Power display update is way too fast and should be damped. Power is depicted as a bar graph yet the percentage is also given. Why do you have a graphic of a soldering iron on the screen? Is this to tell you it is a soldering station? Why abbreviate the word temperature? and the levels are really presets. This is an expensive color graphic display with the user interface design by a two year old. I have seen many simpler designs with a single color OLED display that displayed more information and in an intuitive way.
they make a really nice solder also i think its the 100 model nice and shiny and melts great. mechanic does make some really nice stuff but its just so ugly i dont know why they decided on these color schemes makes their stuff look so much cheaper then it should because for the most part it works very well in most cases. their "short killer" works very well also as does their uv light with fan and usb desktop charger. i agree on the tip cleaner they use the same generic one a lot of others use and its a piece of junk imo. so far thats really the only thing by mechanic that has been really garbage for me i do prefer my aixun 420 over this unit and even the t3a though
I've had a bunch of different jbc clones. Some really good, some crap. My issue is with the sellers. You show them everything they ask and they will not stand behind the products. They prod so much that it feels like they need a dick pic or something. It kills me because I'm so honest with them. I'm buying a real jbc next time. Haha. Excuse my English. As an aside, I think mechanic make some of the better products and have a few on my desks and I've never had an issue.
@@unintendedperson i prefer to have the tip connected to the earth by about 10K so i can use it on PCB's with the power on if needed (only low voltage boards
. Sure, i confuse back in the day, but no one suggest what value to add a resistor between ground and earth in discord forum. So i just copying a jbc video, the tip directly tied to earth. And gladly it work, cause i dont have any other soldering iron, so it hard af to make a connection with hot air station. Lol
@@unintendedperson I tend to use about 10k to earth, but you do want an iron with mains isolation barrier that meets current regulations for electrical safety.
PCBWay 3D Printing and Fabrication: www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyping/
Mechanic C211 on Aliexpress: s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DBR2zf9
Pico Technology 5000 Series Scope:
www.picotech.com/oscilloscope/5000/flexible-resolution-oscilloscope
Support the Channel with Patreon: www.patreon.com/sdgelectronics
Hi Steve, we must warn you (from eevblog forum) that somebody very recently took apart the Aixun T3a handle, and found the construction inadequate inside. So the assessment of this yellow handle here - should be treated with some similar level of caution. Because externally the handle does perhaps looks and feels great. However this does not show internally the materials used and how. For example relating to those longer term durability of contacts. In specific the Aixun handle (T245 style) was discovered to use aluminum contacts held inside of plastic channels. And the plyability of the plastic can then let transmits beinding into the aluminium, which then may indeed gets bent out of shape and plastically deformed. But also the bare aluminum was commented to also perhaps have sparking / arcing deposition issue. This isn't necessarily some death sentence, but it can mean some percentages of people encounter issues, or that some servicing or maintenance or more delicate handling. Which needs to be cautiously observed, and appropriately if diagnosing specific issues. Or when considering the value add to buy seperately some official handle from JBC instead.
Would that be for the green handles or their new blue ones? I was considering getting an aixun t3a because it's at an attractive price for 200w of power for a cheap station. I haven't seen or heard many complaints on it 🤔 would a regular jbc 245 handle work on it? I'm assuming that at that point, a conversion would be needed since the pinouts look different.
well thats a very good question, @@rubenmejia4881 the advice is to check all of them
@@rubenmejia4881Not sure about the original JBC handle, but I have been using the station without any problems so far and I like it :>
Good to see that the transformer is 230V, I was a bit concerned when I saw the 220V label on the rear with the UK being a 240V country and there have been quite a lot of issues historically with 220V products, especially with transformers and capacitors.
Looks a really well made soldering station. I might have to pick one of these up to play with.
Great video, Steve. I do like the Mechanic branded products. I find their solder to be particularly useable. An excellent Soldering Station. It's good product at a great price. Thanks for sharing with us.
Mechanic solder wick,flux,solder wires etc are the best Chinese imho.
@@dimitrismaster Totally agree.
Man I was really looking forward to you grabbing the T245 version. I've been watching your videos alot as of recently because I want to get a decent station setup for the t245. I use a hakko 888d that I love but in some cases when I need it, it doesnt provide me with enough juice for the large ground plains or bigger areas with larger joints it struggles on me. As per your recommendation I have bought a genuine 245 cartridge and also the rubber boot cap that stops the flux vapors from getting in. Just waiting on a decent station without having to break the bank on a jbc since I repair on a hobbyists level but do enjoy owning professional equipment.
Which soldering station did you end up buying ?
What a great station, and as expected from mechanic branded products. Like other people here, im a big fan of their stuff
would have been better if they put a resistor in-line with the earth to the 4mm socket and the tip if it's earthed.
I do like the Weller idea of a 3.5mm jack so you can put a resister in the supplied plug and give the iron tip what ever resistance to earth you like, or isolate it completely by plugging in a plug with nothing inside.
But nice to see a twin bobbin transformer so at least the low voltage side should never come into contact with the mains.
shame the pre-sets could wear out the memory if you keep changing the values.
Weller? The ones that didn't bother to put a fuse in their soldering irons? Yeah no thanks, tip should be earthed.
@@jaro6985 not a problem in the UK we fuse our plugs, about time the rest of the world caught up.
Not sure were you get the fact that tips should be earthed. The power to the handle should be isolated from the mains supply so exposed metal doesn't need to be earthed,. So the tip should be treated like a antistatic mat with just a bleed away resistor to earth. The problem with static is if you have charged up you pcb by handling it and then touching it with your earthed tip you could damage the part connected to the pad.
A lot of these soldering stations need an earthed tip is because the mains isolation is so dodgy they could be a death trap in waiting.
@@TheEmbeddedHobbyist What you say makes sense and sounds correct to me. However, JBC spec
@@davadoff I think it's a problem if you don't have any ESD protection. As if the component on the board has been charged up by being handled and you place an earthed tip on the pin. it's a fast higher current discharge which could damage the part. I prefer the tip to be like the ESD mat to be connected to earth through a high resistance. Also means that when I working on live equipment the iron is not a good earth path should I touch it even when it's off.
Should've done the magnet test on the dodgy brass wooll
Or filmed it going in the bin…
Very happy with their solder wire and solder paste. It's certainly the best I've used.
I just noticed these online , I saw the c210 dual iron . You get 2 c210 Irons , only £95 .
There a cool hot air station too . There stuff looks pretty good .
Looks nice enough.
I’ve seen bridge rectifiers connected in parallel in elevator controllers.
One diode will get hotter which lowers its forward voltage and increases the current through that diode. That makes it even hotter which lowers forward voltage, increases current even more which makes it even hotter.
Parallel diodes need to be in the same package like two one one TO220 package.
Interesting. Shortly after Louis Rossmann just posted a video about JBC's awful practice of selling DDE-1C stations missing the functionality that is advertised for them. For the amount of money you pay for their (JBC) stations you'd think they'd be better, I guess not. What next? subscription soldering stations / hot air ?
Hi can we put JBC handles on this mechanic station thank you for the answer
Please start checking for a grounded tips with a multimeter.
Also if anyone know if the c211 accepts a T245 handle please do tell me.
Oh, did you test if the tip was earthed? I didn't see a connection on that back PCB, and that would explain some of the noise.
I also wanna know that. T12 pro didnt connect the tip to earth
The back PCB has an earth wire soldered directly to it. I guess there is a PCB trace going to the connector for the iron.
20:11 I don’t understand why noise in the heater voltage makes noise in the temperature reading from sensors at least 30-60mm away… Unless the tip is earthed and heater current is flowing out of the tip to an earthed surface because a ground loop is created (like with the Aixun T3A)?
@@davadoff The test board ground plane is at least well capacitively coupled to the measurement circuit. So it makes sense that the noise can get to it. Could be ground loop type effect, yeah.
If the tip is DC powered I wonder why they adopt an old fashioned transformer rather than an SMPS?
Full isolation, reliability, low noise… typically
Is this a good soldering station? 😎
JBC calls the T210 a "20W handpiece". I don't know what they actually drive them at (their base is rated for 40W), but the clone C210 I have will push about 50W into a tip at 12Vdc, higher at 20Vdc. This seems to be common. I have no idea if the lifespan is significantly affected or not yet from my use... Its overkill for a tip of this size and geometry as you say. 40W is plenty.
How many soldering stations does this man have at this point?
The station design approach is rather strange. There are primarily two heater control approaches for a single channel cartridge based soldering station. The first is AC heater control using a large step down transformer (usually also having a separate output winding for the logic supply), and the second, DC heater control, where the heater supply is DC derived from a universal switching design without the large step down transformer. To use a large transformer and then a power switcher for DC heater control is very strange and costly.
The obvious issue with the large transformer is your design is not universal mains. As such, like for the JBC compact line (Pace does something similar), you will see three AC mains offerings; 100VAC, 120VAC and 230VAC, using dual frequency 50/60 Hz power transformers.
The paralleled device bridge can be made from SiC Schottky Barrier Rectifier Diodes, to essentially spread out the heat over the PCB and share current. However, this is an expensive solution. If not SiC you can pair match regular Schottky Barrier Rectifying Diodes, and if both are at the same temperature (close together / track together with temperature) they tend to do the job at very low forward voltages. But why are they there to begin with? Why not just run the heater from AC?
Another strange design choice is to not put more useful information (use color more effectively) on the graphic display and the displays basic layout in general. The screen graphic on the bottom of the screen is the same as the buttons. Why would you waste this screen area with a static label? The Power display update is way too fast and should be damped. Power is depicted as a bar graph yet the percentage is also given. Why do you have a graphic of a soldering iron on the screen? Is this to tell you it is a soldering station? Why abbreviate the word temperature? and the levels are really presets. This is an expensive color graphic display with the user interface design by a two year old. I have seen many simpler designs with a single color OLED display that displayed more information and in an intuitive way.
If anyone have bad experience with this product please tell me. Thanks
they make a really nice solder also i think its the 100 model nice and shiny and melts great. mechanic does make some really nice stuff but its just so ugly i dont know why they decided on these color schemes makes their stuff look so much cheaper then it should because for the most part it works very well in most cases. their "short killer" works very well also as does their uv light with fan and usb desktop charger. i agree on the tip cleaner they use the same generic one a lot of others use and its a piece of junk imo. so far thats really the only thing by mechanic that has been really garbage for me i do prefer my aixun 420 over this unit and even the t3a though
The colour scheme is obviously a copy of Hakko.
Please give it coin test. Also soldering in multi layered board. This kind of price is too good to be true.
I've had a bunch of different jbc clones. Some really good, some crap. My issue is with the sellers. You show them everything they ask and they will not stand behind the products. They prod so much that it feels like they need a dick pic or something. It kills me because I'm so honest with them. I'm buying a real jbc next time. Haha.
Excuse my English. As an aside, I think mechanic make some of the better products and have a few on my desks and I've never had an issue.
First else than author
I have mechanic t12pro and hate it cause the earth not connected to tip. So i modify it.
@@unintendedperson i prefer to have the tip connected to the earth by about 10K so i can use it on PCB's with the power on if needed (only low voltage boards
. Sure, i confuse back in the day, but no one suggest what value to add a resistor between ground and earth in discord forum. So i just copying a jbc video, the tip directly tied to earth. And gladly it work, cause i dont have any other soldering iron, so it hard af to make a connection with hot air station. Lol
The problem is tingling when i touch the solder wire lol
@@unintendedperson I tend to use about 10k to earth, but you do want an iron with mains isolation barrier that meets current regulations for electrical safety.
That metcal could damage the board, too much power dump into the board.