Shows nicely that a big part of the flux's job is to clean oxides off the materials to be soldered, not just to protect the solder itself from oxidation. The nitrogen is fine but it can't do anything to clean up the thin layer of oxide / solder-repellant material from the pad and component lead. You need something active to remove the oxide that already exists.
Great video. I feel you given Nitrogen more than a fair chance but it is not useful for hand soldering where soldering is done fairly fast. For reflow applications it may be more useful as there is more time at elevated temperature.
This is right on the nose. Nitrogen is commonly used in wave soldering applications, and also in reflow ovens. The purpose of the nitrogen in these applications is to do exactly what you said: to use minimal flux, and produce the highest quality reflow possible. When it comes to BGA reflow, the big issue with using lots of flux with these is outgassing, in which the flux begins to boil, producing bubbles. These bubbles are often times large enough to visibly see, but many times they can be 50µm or smaller. These crazy tiny bubbles can actually exist within a solder joint, resulting in a "planar microvoid". Basically, a significant portion of the joint isn't actually filled with solder, it's filled with air. This understandably causes problems for such tiny joints, as the smallest mechanical stress can crack them or shear them entirely. This is often why BGAs will have an underfill. By bathing a BGA with nitrogen, and using a very small amount of flux, these outgassing issues can be further minimized. For hand-soldering, I don't see much of a use for it. It might be nice on something like QFPs or QFNs, but the whole point of reducing outgassing problems from flux is to give the flux bubbles adequate time to coalesce and rise out of the molten solder. This really only occurs in extended reflow, like in an oven or during wave soldering. For hand-soldering, you won't have the iron there long enough to let this operation take place. I imagine if you were to take a bit more time with producing hand-soldered joints, the same benefits could be seen. But for a majority of SMD applications, hot air rework is honestly the only way to solder many of them, and those are the kinds of packages that will have the most problems with outgassing. For most hand-soldering applications, the pads and leads are large enough that any microvoids aren't really a significant problem. There's enough surface area that the joint strength isn't really effected by it. The true test for how good nitrogen soldered joints are would be to examine them with xray and get a cross-section of the microvoiding. Compared to a typical hand-soldered joint with no nitrogen, I'd imagine the differences under xray would be quite noticeable.
@@spartan456 Just as you said. Production soldering is very different from hand soldering. Like the difference between a hobbyist and professional craftsmen.
Might be a bit left field but most of the parts you tested on had enig finish, gold shouldn't have an oxide coating at all to start with (in theory) Perhaps look at it with bare copper pads and through hole parts. Probably go nasa spec on it scotchbrite the board just before soldering, vigorous cleaning of the component leads and then the solder. Then make the joint. (seen a few videos on nasa soldering from the 60s lately, they had a special abrasive cleaning pencil type dealie to dexoidise the pcbs) Perhaps also try a really bad solder joint, I have a feeling this might help one of my students who for whatever reason just can't get the knack of soldering and takes way too long playing about trying to get heat into the joint. Perhaps try it for soldering a wire into a terminal but set the iron to a lower temperature? Such that it takes long enough for the flux to burn off like it normally would. That's an idea too I guess, can you solder at a lower temperature with the nitrogen on? Does the reduction in oxide formation allow for better flow at lower temperatures?
The danger is in not noticing the rising concentration. The feeling of needing to breathe comes from an accumulation of CO2 in the body so if you are breathing normally its hard to notice whats going on before you pass out.
In my industry, rooms with electronics have the air 'thinned' with extra nitrogen so the oxygen fraction is just 16%. You can work all day in these rooms without noticing. It's for fire protection, nothing can catch fire in there.
Maybe make a box like a mini "clean room". Put your ordinary soldering iron and PCB inside. Inject N2 inside with a slow flow. Wait a few minutes so the O2 is pushed out through the openings for your hands then solder. This is probably 10* less expensive...
@@hxhdfjifzirstc894 You are right. I wrote that while watching the video. It looks like many "audiophile" equipment: pricey and doesn't give any advantage in a normal situation.
Soldering with nitrogen must be useful for a very specific use case. Maybe reducing oxygen absorbed in the solder joint lowering the resistance? Could be measured with a milliohms meter? Would lead free solder benefit more from it perhaps, or equal or less so? One usecase I can think of is a large solder joint like a piece of heatsink or shield where you may need extended dwell time and good mechanical strength, ie automotive applications where oxydized solder may be weaker compared to solder joints done with an nitrogen atmosphere.
Or maybe soldering special metals, such as thermal coupler with pure tin solder. These combinations are hard to wet and if theres a tiny bit of oxide they wont even touch. And the temperature is also too high for most flux to stay on the joint for long time.
Increasingly strict restrictions on chemicals used in flux and flux cleaner means that the less flux you can use, the better. And I mean Nitrogen is kinda the end game, I doubt Nitrogen gas soldering is going to be banned anytime soon.
When tig welding you break the arc but you keep the tip close to the weld until the pool cools keeping the volatile metals with in the inert gas shield until its cool enough to not oxidize. Is this perhaps also the intended technique for this as well? Wait until the solder joint has solidified before moving on to the next?
Would nitrogen soldering have more benefit for aluminium soldering where you have a big problem with oxidisation? Very impressive demo of how flux makes the solder flow.
The JBC regulator looks very similar to my Hakko regulator except that it doesn't have the solenoid valve nor the electronics. I also have the very similar looking nitrogen membrane filter. The filters must be supplied with absolutely dry air because the water molecules are too large to pass and they'll slowly clog it, though it's possible to apply great nitrogen pressure in the opposite direction to dislodge the water molecules to unclog it.
Very interesting video and piece of kit. I have about 25 years experience TIG welding steel, stainless steel, aluminum, and titanium, as well as stick welding, MIG welding, and copper, brass, and steel brazing. It looks to me like the benefits are small, but they are there nonetheless. If a tech was fabricating a board for the space station or perhaps a nuclear reactor I’d be all for this equipment... When I was TIG welding (very expensive) titanium parts, both the parts and the titanium brushes were vacuum sealed in plastic to minimize oxygen exposure until the welding began, and were only opened when the parts and brushes were in a welding tent (which kind of looks like a bench top sand blaster with arm holes, gloves, and a window). The packages were only opened after the welding tent was purged and flooded with 100% medical grade Argon, and were then welded in an Argon atmosphere with the TIG torch flowing pure Argon as well. I was wondering if a welding tent flooded with Nitrogen wouldn’t accomplish the same results as this iron. If I had this setup in my shop I would be very tempted to hook it up to a bottle of Argon or an Argon/Helium mix to see the results. Great video, thanks!
I completely understand your concern for oxygen displacement, resulting in anoxia, the lack of oxygen around 20-21%. With larger rooms and leaky garages are little or no threat to many folks using shield gas for MIG, TIG and not an issue with arch welding as it is only a covering on the rod covering the weld itself. But it is very good of you bring this issue to folks attention as more people die from “Co” poisoning every year in the USA than any other type of gas for plug flies from gas dryers, furnaces and other gas appliances much less fire place fires from burning green wood resulting sun creosote in dirty chimneys. Great information and excellent video on a product I have never heard of. Their must be some residual cooling of the soldered joint if an after flow can be controlled. This would make it quick for sensitive SMD components to solder, solidify and get out! Very interesting! Thanks.
Oh Awesome! I've been looking for *anything* about these irons for literally a month since I first discovered their existence. I'm pretty sure you're the first review on the internet about them. I can't watch it right now but boy howdy am I keen to see it!
It would be nice to see an update on your solder comparison video, where you include this SolderKing solder. An update on the flux comparison video would also be nice (mainly since certain fluxes seem to have a different composition now including the original Amtech flux, and the 'yellow tub' flux)
The Amtech flux is almost magical compared to the MG Chemicals stuff that I subjected myself too before. So in that respect Louis Rossmann did reward me with something beyond a headache.
I thought that maybe a cardboard box to solder in might be a cheaper alternative. You could then flow nitrogen into the container to exclude the air. :)
Have you tried hooking the regulator up to compressed air to see if the differences are due to the lack of oxygen, or due to the warm stream of air making a small difference to how quickly the solder can cool?
Thx for the review. I'd expect this system could help with difficult to solder heavy components/PCB's; As you need to hold your tip on the pcb+pin for a long time, you'd need to keep adding so much solder with flux that at the end you'll end up with a hard to clean "burned" joint. So the system could extend the time one has to add heat to the workpiece. Any comments on that?
Have you thought of modifying an Oxygen concentrator? Instead of using the oxygen output from the concentrator tap off the exhaust which will be mostly nitrogen. You can forget about the safety issues as you will be taking the nitrogen out of the room air and putting it back again so there can’t be a rise in nitrogen level. Plus if you feel the need you could have a puff of the oxygen output. :-)
@@MoraFermi now only if I had a way to measure it I'd do it on mine. I'll have to find the service manual for it and see what its efficiency is at removing the oxygen. I just thought it might work, you never know.
Hm. Interesting but not going on my list to Father Christmas. I continue to prefer my high levels of ppN2 underwater whilst diving rather than soldering! Good video though... never knew that was 'a thing'.
On the subject of fume removal... could you hook up a small air pump to that tool itself instead of the nitrogen to see how effective it'd be in persuading the fumes from not going straight for my nose and eyes? I might be able to convince myself that that alone might be worth picking up the handle itself haha.
The idea is good, but, you really want a proper fume extraction system, even if its DIY. Blowing the fumes away means they just sit in the air in your room, so it won't be as irritating, but you'll still end up breathing a lot of it in. For the price of the handle, you could build an extractor.
There are such system for much less money. I had a Weller station with that 20 years ago. Think a drinking straw through the handle. Didn't like it. The straw got in the way when you worked, didn't work that well, and clogged up with flux all the time.
cool. i think l might get a decent nitrogen station later when i have a good bit a money to pplay with but so far i think nobody should prioritise it just for better solder joints, it is interesting though. Thanks for the review, explanations, and testing.
Since it didn't seem to be a notable improvement for normal hand soldering, I was wondering if it might make aluminium soldering easier or more reliable?
I was wondering during the tests how much of this was due to the nitrogen itself and how much was due to effectively hot air combining with soldering. Could probably be tested by attaching compressed air to the iron.
Very interesting Video! So you need a little flux to get it work. I wonder what the use case is. Is it your stuff should go to space, should last 50 years and faces high temperatures? So you want from the beginning as less corosive flux as possible on your board? Is it a long-term reliability thing?
I would be interested in seeing if there's a significant difference if a noble gas was used instead of Nitrogen. An effective shielding gas should be inert and heavier than air. Although nitrogen is generally inert, it's more reactive than any of the noble gasses and weight about the same as air. It doesn't have the mass to neatly settle over the molten solder pool to prevent oxidation. As a result, it needs to be pressurized and directed at the pool. The pressure also dissipates it away just as quickly. Moreover, the soldering iron is held at an angle which often doesn't fully target the pool. A noble gas like Argon is superior in this regard. It shields the pool better due to its heavier mass, reducing the counterproductive pressure needed.
Perhaps testing with exotic high-temperature solder alloys on stainless steel, aluminum, or silver joints. Can you maintain a usable tinning or ball on a hot iron longer?
One other thing to note with the N2 filters. They are very susceptible to solvents given the hole size of the filter. They need a considerable amount of air filtering to protect the N2 generator membrane.
1. For TIG welding, the inert gas used is more than just for shielding. It strongly influences the characteristics of the arc. 2. The leaking nitrogen cylinder is a non-issue. There's plenty of gas diffusion happening between your room and the outside world. If you're leaking faster than that, you'll definitely hear it.
Seems they messed up in taking the size of that 1000uF 50V cap in account in the flow regulator, that's why the PCB is attached "wonky" :-) Instead of re-designing the metal body to make room, they chose to use a longer plastic spacer for the screw.
I thought it made a big enough difference to say that nitrogen is useful for hand soldering. For the significant price to have this feature on a hand iron, then no it is not worth the additional cost. Certainly nitrogen will be beneficial to achieve higher quality solder joints if that is required.
I've noticed at 15:36 you remove the soldering iron just as soon as the solder flows, letting it solidify in air. Would there be more of a difference if you kept the nitrogen flow all the time until the solder solidified?
Thanks for this videos, you can't find this kind of quality reviews around! P.S. 8:10 the pcb is wonky because they put a big capacitor between the pcb and the metal box and they don't have space. Can't believe JBC did this kind of things. Horrible! Thanks for exposing it.
12:12 liquid flux literally gets blown away, which is not the case with usual soldering. I'd consider this a double disadvantage. Firstly, it messes the surface of solidified tin due to uneven air oscillations against liquid metal surface tension. Secondly, flux blown away from solder joint is wasted, does not help to wet the joint and creates more wider mess on PCB.
Next time use decent 63/37 solder instead of lead free. It should be a lot more apparent then that your nitrogen iron produces less reflective finish, while air with enough flux will look like mirror.
For me the solder joints without nigtrogen looks not as clean as with. The 3.3.% flux just prevents the nitrogen to do its job it's being blown away by the transition into gas. Would be interesting to see soldering with and without nitrogen when there is some thin layer of flux(mixed with IPA) applied on the joint prior to solder.
Seems like an expensive solution for s problema that doenst exist since flux workd better I thought It whould give some improvement since you dont have to take on consideration the toxic fumes of the flux, but It displaces oxígen, so you still need some kind of extractor or fan
Very interesting video. I've been thinking about all kinds of ways to generate safe small amounts of nitrogen for this purpose. However, it seems now that it's not worth the effort. However.... I wonder if you did the same soldering of a board INSIDE A SMALL TRAY, so that the entire tray somewhat "fills" with the nitrogen and doesn't allow it to escape if it would be more effective? 73 DE W8LV BILL
The test with plumbing solder showed that what flux does is mostly to lessen the surface tension and enabling the solder to wet. Lead/tin does not really 'rust' in the same amount as steel, and the difference in temperature is great compared to Tig welding. What is the use case for this setup according to JBC?
They don't really say, the whole nitrogen for hand soldering is not well documented. It's well used in wave solder machines, but the solder sits at high temperature for hours on end
I assume you order quite a few soldering equipment from a AliExpress ect....... what's the delivery times like ??? and more importantly do I need to pay taxes/charges on my doorstep (to UK, Brexit etc.....I ordered an item from abroad before, paid purchase price, tax + delivery...when item arrived in the UK courier company (UK firm) wanted even more fees/taxes to hand item over to me)
AliExpress generally make it clear what you'll pay. If it's under £130 it's all taken care of when you pay on AliExpress so no fees at all. Higher cost items you'll pay 20% VAT plus the shipping company's fee - usually £12 to £20
Do you still have your Sony IMX 290 Microscope camera? Would you be willing to sell it? I can’t find a legit seller and I know you reviewed one that was legit and not a fake. It’s really hard to find a real genuine microscope camera with the IMX 290 sensor these days.
on that chip your soldering skils are totaly oposite of everything what you do :) cant believe haha noithing bad bad why you continued adding soldering wire when 2 pins allready been jumped with too much wire :)
Perhaps it's really to prevent worse case scenarios on equipment that can't fail for military and aerospace applications where welds have to take 100% of the time,
I thought that maybe a cardboard box to solder in might be a cheaper alternative. You could then flow nitrogen into the container to exclude the air. :)
Shows nicely that a big part of the flux's job is to clean oxides off the materials to be soldered, not just to protect the solder itself from oxidation. The nitrogen is fine but it can't do anything to clean up the thin layer of oxide / solder-repellant material from the pad and component lead. You need something active to remove the oxide that already exists.
Well, thanks for satisfying my curiosity, looks like a solution in search of a problem, at least for the moment.
A solution for a non-existent problem?
Great video. I feel you given Nitrogen more than a fair chance but it is not useful for hand soldering where soldering is done fairly fast. For reflow applications it may be more useful as there is more time at elevated temperature.
This is right on the nose. Nitrogen is commonly used in wave soldering applications, and also in reflow ovens. The purpose of the nitrogen in these applications is to do exactly what you said: to use minimal flux, and produce the highest quality reflow possible.
When it comes to BGA reflow, the big issue with using lots of flux with these is outgassing, in which the flux begins to boil, producing bubbles. These bubbles are often times large enough to visibly see, but many times they can be 50µm or smaller. These crazy tiny bubbles can actually exist within a solder joint, resulting in a "planar microvoid". Basically, a significant portion of the joint isn't actually filled with solder, it's filled with air. This understandably causes problems for such tiny joints, as the smallest mechanical stress can crack them or shear them entirely. This is often why BGAs will have an underfill.
By bathing a BGA with nitrogen, and using a very small amount of flux, these outgassing issues can be further minimized. For hand-soldering, I don't see much of a use for it. It might be nice on something like QFPs or QFNs, but the whole point of reducing outgassing problems from flux is to give the flux bubbles adequate time to coalesce and rise out of the molten solder. This really only occurs in extended reflow, like in an oven or during wave soldering. For hand-soldering, you won't have the iron there long enough to let this operation take place.
I imagine if you were to take a bit more time with producing hand-soldered joints, the same benefits could be seen. But for a majority of SMD applications, hot air rework is honestly the only way to solder many of them, and those are the kinds of packages that will have the most problems with outgassing. For most hand-soldering applications, the pads and leads are large enough that any microvoids aren't really a significant problem. There's enough surface area that the joint strength isn't really effected by it.
The true test for how good nitrogen soldered joints are would be to examine them with xray and get a cross-section of the microvoiding. Compared to a typical hand-soldered joint with no nitrogen, I'd imagine the differences under xray would be quite noticeable.
@@spartan456 Just as you said. Production soldering is very different from hand soldering.
Like the difference between a hobbyist and professional craftsmen.
Might be a bit left field but most of the parts you tested on had enig finish, gold shouldn't have an oxide coating at all to start with (in theory)
Perhaps look at it with bare copper pads and through hole parts.
Probably go nasa spec on it scotchbrite the board just before soldering, vigorous cleaning of the component leads and then the solder. Then make the joint. (seen a few videos on nasa soldering from the 60s lately, they had a special abrasive cleaning pencil type dealie to dexoidise the pcbs)
Perhaps also try a really bad solder joint, I have a feeling this might help one of my students who for whatever reason just can't get the knack of soldering and takes way too long playing about trying to get heat into the joint. Perhaps try it for soldering a wire into a terminal but set the iron to a lower temperature? Such that it takes long enough for the flux to burn off like it normally would.
That's an idea too I guess, can you solder at a lower temperature with the nitrogen on? Does the reduction in oxide formation allow for better flow at lower temperatures?
Given that Air is 80% nitrogen I don't think slow leaks are a problem.
The danger is in not noticing the rising concentration. The feeling of needing to breathe comes from an accumulation of CO2 in the body so if you are breathing normally its hard to notice whats going on before you pass out.
As mentioned the issue is displacement of the oxygen in the air rather than the nitrogen itself
In my industry, rooms with electronics have the air 'thinned' with extra nitrogen so the oxygen fraction is just 16%. You can work all day in these rooms without noticing.
It's for fire protection, nothing can catch fire in there.
Maybe make a box like a mini "clean room". Put your ordinary soldering iron and PCB inside. Inject N2 inside with a slow flow. Wait a few minutes so the O2 is pushed out through the openings for your hands then solder.
This is probably 10* less expensive...
Until someone finds a use for the nitrogen, I don't think anyone will bother.
@@hxhdfjifzirstc894 You are right. I wrote that while watching the video. It looks like many "audiophile" equipment: pricey and doesn't give any advantage in a normal situation.
Soldering with nitrogen must be useful for a very specific use case. Maybe reducing oxygen absorbed in the solder joint lowering the resistance? Could be measured with a milliohms meter?
Would lead free solder benefit more from it perhaps, or equal or less so?
One usecase I can think of is a large solder joint like a piece of heatsink or shield where you may need extended dwell time and good mechanical strength, ie automotive applications where oxydized solder may be weaker compared to solder joints done with an nitrogen atmosphere.
This was lead free solder in this video. Interesting thought about resistance, I could try measuring that
I was thinking stranded wire, with lots of surface area perhaps, and rework as others have mentioned, thermal pads that have to be hot for a long time
Or maybe soldering special metals, such as thermal coupler with pure tin solder. These combinations are hard to wet and if theres a tiny bit of oxide they wont even touch. And the temperature is also too high for most flux to stay on the joint for long time.
Increasingly strict restrictions on chemicals used in flux and flux cleaner means that the less flux you can use, the better. And I mean Nitrogen is kinda the end game, I doubt Nitrogen gas soldering is going to be banned anytime soon.
maybe try soldering with the tip at a much higher than normal temperature, its should burn off the flux faster and promote oxidation
When tig welding you break the arc but you keep the tip close to the weld until the pool cools keeping the volatile metals with in the inert gas shield until its cool enough to not oxidize. Is this perhaps also the intended technique for this as well? Wait until the solder joint has solidified before moving on to the next?
how do you "break the arc" in his case ? juste take a small step back ?
I'll certainly try that
@@GrandDiego yeah just take the iron off the part, but keep the gas flowing over the part until it has solidified.
You spend the money so we don't have to. Seems like a very good deal to me!
Would nitrogen soldering have more benefit for aluminium soldering where you have a big problem with oxidisation?
Very impressive demo of how flux makes the solder flow.
The JBC regulator looks very similar to my Hakko regulator except that it doesn't have the solenoid valve nor the electronics. I also have the very similar looking nitrogen membrane filter. The filters must be supplied with absolutely dry air because the water molecules are too large to pass and they'll slowly clog it, though it's possible to apply great nitrogen pressure in the opposite direction to dislodge the water molecules to unclog it.
Very interesting video and piece of kit. I have about 25 years experience TIG welding steel, stainless steel, aluminum, and titanium, as well as stick welding, MIG welding, and copper, brass, and steel brazing. It looks to me like the benefits are small, but they are there nonetheless. If a tech was fabricating a board for the space station or perhaps a nuclear reactor I’d be all for this equipment...
When I was TIG welding (very expensive) titanium parts, both the parts and the titanium brushes were vacuum sealed in plastic to minimize oxygen exposure until the welding began, and were only opened when the parts and brushes were in a welding tent (which kind of looks like a bench top sand blaster with arm holes, gloves, and a window). The packages were only opened after the welding tent was purged and flooded with 100% medical grade Argon, and were then welded in an Argon atmosphere with the TIG torch flowing pure Argon as well. I was wondering if a welding tent flooded with Nitrogen wouldn’t accomplish the same results as this iron. If I had this setup in my shop I would be very tempted to hook it up to a bottle of Argon or an Argon/Helium mix to see the results. Great video, thanks!
so they're trying to reduce hazardous elements by using hazardous elements..
very nice of JBC..
I completely understand your concern for oxygen displacement, resulting in anoxia, the lack of oxygen around 20-21%. With larger rooms and leaky garages are little or no threat to many folks using shield gas for MIG, TIG and not an issue with arch welding as it is only a covering on the rod covering the weld itself. But it is very good of you bring this issue to folks attention as more people die from “Co” poisoning every year in the USA than any other type of gas for plug flies from gas dryers, furnaces and other gas appliances much less fire place fires from burning green wood resulting sun creosote in dirty chimneys.
Great information and excellent video on a product I have never heard of. Their must be some residual cooling of the soldered joint if an after flow can be controlled. This would make it quick for sensitive SMD components to solder, solidify and get out!
Very interesting! Thanks.
Oh Awesome! I've been looking for *anything* about these irons for literally a month since I first discovered their existence. I'm pretty sure you're the first review on the internet about them. I can't watch it right now but boy howdy am I keen to see it!
It would be nice to see an update on your solder comparison video, where you include this SolderKing solder. An update on the flux comparison video would also be nice (mainly since certain fluxes seem to have a different composition now including the original Amtech flux, and the 'yellow tub' flux)
I will probably do an update soon.
The Amtech flux is almost magical compared to the MG Chemicals stuff that I subjected myself too before. So in that respect Louis Rossmann did reward me with something beyond a headache.
I thought that maybe a cardboard box to solder in might be a cheaper alternative. You could then flow nitrogen into the container to exclude the air. :)
or burn a candle inside until the oxygen is depleted, no nitrogen necessary.
Yes, my thoughts also.
Pretty much what you do when you tig weld titanium, with argon
that is so scetcky
Amazing never heard of such a device before
Great video Steve, I am glad our solders are performing well for you
Have you tried hooking the regulator up to compressed air to see if the differences are due to the lack of oxygen, or due to the warm stream of air making a small difference to how quickly the solder can cool?
Nice thought, I could try that
Will you consider reaching-out and testing one of the new Chinese Laser Micro-soldering Machines / Stations?
Research begins...
@@sdgelectronics That's great...i'll look out for announcements and or subsequent video in the near future.
@@sdgelectronics IMO, consider returning this nitrogen unit, unless you are going to do some contract nitrogen soldering.
A lot of hard work in this video. And a very fair analysis. Thanks.
You can also buy a spO2 measuring device for £10 and check yourself every 5 minutes. If your 02 blood content is going down you have a problem...
Thx for the review. I'd expect this system could help with difficult to solder heavy components/PCB's; As you need to hold your tip on the pcb+pin for a long time, you'd need to keep adding so much solder with flux that at the end you'll end up with a hard to clean "burned" joint. So the system could extend the time one has to add heat to the workpiece. Any comments on that?
Have you thought of modifying an Oxygen concentrator? Instead of using the oxygen output from the concentrator tap off the exhaust which will be mostly nitrogen. You can forget about the safety issues as you will be taking the nitrogen out of the room air and putting it back again so there can’t be a rise in nitrogen level.
Plus if you feel the need you could have a puff of the oxygen output. :-)
Off to ebay I go...
@@sdgelectronics Note that oxygen concentrators don't remove all oxygen from the exhaust air, merely a large part of it.
@@MoraFermi now only if I had a way to measure it I'd do it on mine. I'll have to find the service manual for it and see what its efficiency is at removing the oxygen. I just thought it might work, you never know.
Hm. Interesting but not going on my list to Father Christmas. I continue to prefer my high levels of ppN2 underwater whilst diving rather than soldering! Good video though... never knew that was 'a thing'.
On the subject of fume removal... could you hook up a small air pump to that tool itself instead of the nitrogen to see how effective it'd be in persuading the fumes from not going straight for my nose and eyes? I might be able to convince myself that that alone might be worth picking up the handle itself haha.
The idea is good, but, you really want a proper fume extraction system, even if its DIY. Blowing the fumes away means they just sit in the air in your room, so it won't be as irritating, but you'll still end up breathing a lot of it in. For the price of the handle, you could build an extractor.
There are such system for much less money. I had a Weller station with that 20 years ago. Think a drinking straw through the handle.
Didn't like it. The straw got in the way when you worked, didn't work that well, and clogged up with flux all the time.
There is a video why the fumes go straight up to your face th-cam.com/video/exRgzJaB3D4/w-d-xo.html
I wonder how the resistance would change if you put a lot of current through the one soldered in nitrogen vs air.
Definitely something to try
cool. i think l might get a decent nitrogen station later when i have a good bit a money to pplay with but so far i think nobody should prioritise it just for better solder joints, it is interesting though. Thanks for the review, explanations, and testing.
Since it didn't seem to be a notable improvement for normal hand soldering, I was wondering if it might make aluminium soldering easier or more reliable?
Such a pleasure to watch your video. The abundance of knowledge and how well you portray it all is superb.
Great video btw! I’ve always wondered about the JBC nitrogen soldering station.
Nice! I had been looking at these and wondering whether they make a big difference.
@SDG Electronics Thanks, off the bucket list it goes :)
I was wondering during the tests how much of this was due to the nitrogen itself and how much was due to effectively hot air combining with soldering. Could probably be tested by attaching compressed air to the iron.
Maybe try soldering in a high oxygen environment to really bring out the difference?
Very interesting Video! So you need a little flux to get it work. I wonder what the use case is. Is it your stuff should go to space, should last 50 years and faces high temperatures? So you want from the beginning as less corosive flux as possible on your board? Is it a long-term reliability thing?
I would be interested in seeing if there's a significant difference if a noble gas was used instead of Nitrogen. An effective shielding gas should be inert and heavier than air. Although nitrogen is generally inert, it's more reactive than any of the noble gasses and weight about the same as air. It doesn't have the mass to neatly settle over the molten solder pool to prevent oxidation. As a result, it needs to be pressurized and directed at the pool. The pressure also dissipates it away just as quickly. Moreover, the soldering iron is held at an angle which often doesn't fully target the pool. A noble gas like Argon is superior in this regard. It shields the pool better due to its heavier mass, reducing the counterproductive pressure needed.
Perhaps testing with exotic high-temperature solder alloys on stainless steel, aluminum, or silver joints. Can you maintain a usable tinning or ball on a hot iron longer?
Some manufacturers say that nitrogen improoves lifespan of the tip in lead free soldering as well
One other thing to note with the N2 filters. They are very susceptible to solvents given the hole size of the filter. They need a considerable amount of air filtering to protect the N2 generator membrane.
My suggestion is to do test with HMP soldering allowed. Due high temp, flux is gone very fast and soldering is not that easy
My soldering iron is a 35 year old piece of crap from a rummage sale. It works fine. It originally came from a company that made medical devices.
1. For TIG welding, the inert gas used is more than just for shielding. It strongly influences the characteristics of the arc.
2. The leaking nitrogen cylinder is a non-issue. There's plenty of gas diffusion happening between your room and the outside world. If you're leaking faster than that, you'll definitely hear it.
Seems they messed up in taking the size of that 1000uF 50V cap in account in the flow regulator, that's why the PCB is attached "wonky" :-) Instead of re-designing the metal body to make room, they chose to use a longer plastic spacer for the screw.
I thought it made a big enough difference to say that nitrogen is useful for hand soldering. For the significant price to have this feature on a hand iron, then no it is not worth the additional cost. Certainly nitrogen will be beneficial to achieve higher quality solder joints if that is required.
I've noticed at 15:36 you remove the soldering iron just as soon as the solder flows, letting it solidify in air. Would there be more of a difference if you kept the nitrogen flow all the time until the solder solidified?
Thanks for this videos, you can't find this kind of quality reviews around! P.S. 8:10 the pcb is wonky because they put a big capacitor between the pcb and the metal box and they don't have space. Can't believe JBC did this kind of things. Horrible! Thanks for exposing it.
As always, excellent demonstration. Thanks for sharing
12:12 liquid flux literally gets blown away, which is not the case with usual soldering.
I'd consider this a double disadvantage.
Firstly, it messes the surface of solidified tin due to uneven air oscillations against liquid metal surface tension.
Secondly, flux blown away from solder joint is wasted, does not help to wet the joint and creates more wider mess on PCB.
Next time use decent 63/37 solder instead of lead free. It should be a lot more apparent then that your nitrogen iron produces less reflective finish, while air with enough flux will look like mirror.
Do you have any OSP pcbs , that might be interesting since they should be oxide "free"
For me the solder joints without nigtrogen looks not as clean as with. The 3.3.% flux just prevents the nitrogen to do its job it's being blown away by the transition into gas. Would be interesting to see soldering with and without nitrogen when there is some thin layer of flux(mixed with IPA) applied on the joint prior to solder.
Wonder how this would work if you use Argon gas that I use for MIG welding?
I think the only purpose is to prevent tip oxidation.
Actually there is a noticeable difference on the appearance of these tips
Seems like an expensive solution for s problema that doenst exist since flux workd better
I thought It whould give some improvement since you dont have to take on consideration the toxic fumes of the flux, but It displaces oxígen, so you still need some kind of extractor or fan
You may want to experiment with that larger lens, as it should give you a larger covered zone.
Very interesting video. I've been thinking about all kinds of ways to generate safe small amounts of nitrogen for this purpose. However, it seems now that it's not worth the effort. However.... I wonder if you did the same soldering of a board INSIDE A SMALL TRAY, so that the entire tray somewhat "fills" with the nitrogen and doesn't allow it to escape if it would be more effective? 73 DE W8LV BILL
Review I2C T12 Plus Seems Great power and not like I2C t210
The test with plumbing solder showed that what flux does is mostly to lessen the surface tension and enabling the solder to wet. Lead/tin does not really 'rust' in the same amount as steel, and the difference in temperature is great compared to Tig welding.
What is the use case for this setup according to JBC?
They don't really say, the whole nitrogen for hand soldering is not well documented. It's well used in wave solder machines, but the solder sits at high temperature for hours on end
Thanks.
is the nitrogen perhaps more helpful for soldering ROHS / lead free?
These were actually lead free alloys! They performed really well
Hey, what tweezers you used to place the smd ic?
Interesting...cheers.
I assume you order quite a few soldering equipment from a AliExpress ect....... what's the delivery times like ??? and more importantly do I need to pay taxes/charges on my doorstep (to UK, Brexit etc.....I ordered an item from abroad before, paid purchase price, tax + delivery...when item arrived in the UK courier company (UK firm) wanted even more fees/taxes to hand item over to me)
AliExpress generally make it clear what you'll pay. If it's under £130 it's all taken care of when you pay on AliExpress so no fees at all. Higher cost items you'll pay 20% VAT plus the shipping company's fee - usually £12 to £20
@@sdgelectronics thank you for the info and the quick reply
Do you still have your Sony IMX 290 Microscope camera? Would you be willing to sell it? I can’t find a legit seller and I know you reviewed one that was legit and not a fake. It’s really hard to find a real genuine microscope camera with the IMX 290 sensor these days.
I feel like we still don't know the intended purpose/benefit of this nitrogen soldering station. Do they make any claims about what it's for?
Basically high reliability soldering
@@sdgelectronics In what context is regular hand soldering considered a weak link in reliability? Gear for outer space?
price in India?
Hi, Was that lead free solder or 60/40 ?
Lead free
Was that lead free solder?
Yes
NICE VEDIOS SIR INDIA KOLKATA
I think it would work better with pure Hydrogen :D
going to bed now.
on that chip your soldering skils are totaly oposite of everything what you do :) cant believe haha noithing bad bad why you continued adding soldering wire when 2 pins allready been jumped with too much wire :)
👍👍
I don't know if it's the color scheme or just how the thing looks, but to me, at least through the video, the whole apparatus seems cheaply built.
Near worthless. Thanks!
Nope too expansive for me I can live without that still producing good solders with cheap Irons, Cheap Hot Air station and Cheap Hot plates
Most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
Perhaps it's really to prevent worse case scenarios on equipment that can't fail for military and aerospace applications where welds have to take 100% of the time,
I thought that maybe a cardboard box to solder in might be a cheaper alternative. You could then flow nitrogen into the container to exclude the air. :)