Great review - thanks. On my unit there is an extra wire from the mains earth to the front control panel, which extends the earth protection to the tip of the bit, but still does not earth the case. I followed your mod with the earth wire via a lug to one piece of the case but I also added a piece of adhesive copper tape (slug and snail gardening protection for plant pots!) at the back to connect the upper and lower halves of the case and added a couple of plain washers to the two screws to prevent the copper tape being torn as the screws are tightened. Now everything about the case is earthed, including the metal part of the 5-pin socket. None of my extra mods has affected the sleep operation when the iron is parked in the cradle.
12:05 there is actually another fuse in the IEC power connector itself, between the power switch and the outlet (inlet?). Also for many European countries the power cord itself would not be polarized, so that L and N would be randomly connected anyways.
Another good soldering review. Those spring type stands tend to be a bit tedious for getting cables caught in. Looks to me like they have used heat shrink as a cable strain on the handpiece 🙄
I remember seeing those handles with a rubber o-ring around the part where the tip attaches to prevent fumes entering the handle and corroding the innards.
JBC added this feature to improve the product, but I suspect that the Chinese clones may never do so as it's obvious that they're cost-optimizing these handpieces to an unreasonable degree if they can't even use a "real" strain relief or bother to connect the standby wire to the metal ring.
You havw got to be running out of space for soldering stations by now. Nice to see banggood are placing goods on the market that don't meet CE or UKCA. Also a fuse on the netural conductor is also not allowed by the standards for the UK as if it blows it leaves the power supply live to 240V.
Damn, how did I miss that one :) Congratz on the new system... I would have loved to see that, was busy drooling over metcal's the last couple weeks - still not sure if I am willing to spend the coin on the device without ever seeing on in real life lol - can always "rent" from amazon but I only do that if there is a chance I might keep it. Hell the only one I see now is $1200 + $80 shipping from Croatia - used, grumble.
That board blew the tip off one of my probe master leads haha. The board is almost identical. It was the wrong board for the station. They just throw those things together. I bought it for fun on sale. I was checking the voltage between earth and live. I grounded it as well. Both fuses blew at the same time.
Amazing how much variation there is among Chinese clones. You'd think it would all be the same. But they can't seem to resist the temptation to shave an extra penny off the cost of manufacturing the junk. Exactly why Chinese goods have the reputation they do.
Surely the fact the iron tip itself is triggering the sleep mode (rather than the collar) means the handpiece is miswired. Shouldn't the tip be grounded (for ESD) to mains earth? I'm not sure how you conclude with a recommendation either when it has many faults - ungrounded chassis, ineffective handpiece cable strain relief, non-functional sleep mode, under-powered so it can't take advantage of the tip's performance. Maybe you meant it is fairly good "for the money".
In fact, now I watch again, they didn't even solder two out of five pins of the handpiece connector to the controller board. I'm surprised anything other than heating and temp sensing works.
@@sdgelectronics As much as I would love to see that, your going to empty my pockets here if you keep showing me things I cant live without! :) Thank you for all your time and work checking out this stuff for us!
21:27 How about stuffing the lower part of the holder with a Brass Tip Cleaner Wire Sponge Ball? It would make the tip contact the stand, and clean the tip at the same time :-)
I think the SMT NTC device for cold junction compensation should be close to the connector solder connections, yet it is on the opposite side of the board. Does somebody know why? For large thermal mass soldering a common technique is to preheat the board to below reflow and then solder locally with an iron or hot air. You don't really want to use an iron on a pad this large.
Its approx $150 usd total. Not worth the headaches. The China market has forgotten why we bought these units. CHEAP PRICES. Happily running a Hakko 951.
Hello. I have a miniware ts101 and I would need more soldering power. Is there a difference in power if I buy this soldering iron vs ts101? I know you have both. Thank you!
this station give you the same power or a bit more ts101 have 65-90w 24-28v almost the same ... try check something from AIXUN 200W or something like this
I could very well have simply missed you mentioning this, but is the handpiece cable nice and flexible (and thus most likely made from silicone), or is it very stiff (and thus probably PVC), or perhaps it is hard to tell? I went back but I couldn't find this being mentioned in the video. I was additionally wondering a little bit why you haven't tried to put a current clamp onto that fat red wire going from the PSU to the control PCB? This would immediately dispell the obvious 240 watt marketing lies and yield us an accurate number for the honest wattage this station is actually capable of. Now all we know that it very much isn't 240 watts, and that a more reasonable ballpark would be a more reasonable and much lower wattage, but what is a reasonable range estimate? Perhaps somewhere between 30 to 60 watts?
I had it plugged into the power meter during soldering. It registered 60W peak when soldering with the large JBC tip. The handpiece cable is not pure silicone, but it is pretty flexible. Definitely not PVC though.
@@sdgelectronics aha, so that was what you meant by that! I do indeed remember something about you mentioning a wattage, but I just assumed it was the maximum power rating of that special genuine JBC soldering tip or something. Until the moment where you just mentioned it in your comment, I had no clue whatsoever that you had it also attached to a kill-a-watt or other power metering device! Thank you for your quick reply and follow up to my question, by the way! I really hope you know that the hard work you put into these extremely thorough, hands-on and very detailed soldering station reviews of yours certainly does not go unnoticed! Your hard work making these videos is very, very much appreciated! Thank you very much 👍😁😁
I have watched your videos countless times looking at different products I am interested in, I thank you very much for reviewing them for the audience! What is the Most Capable soldering iron you have worked with yet? If an RF type, please also list the best non RF type. (I have a feeling its the Metcal 52xx model) It looked like the Auxin T3A was the most capable for the money in your videos? I was also looking at BST-993 JBC clone too, not sure if either can live up to JBC and are they comparable to the powerful JBC or just the compact ones (heard the compact were about 25% as powerful as the fully capable JBC's?) I CANT DECIDE and even the used Metcal MX500 are quite expensive, often without handle. Could either buy one new Metcal OR......a JBC clone + a couple JBC brand tips + Microscope + Camera for scope to output to screen & record + some other useful tools for all of those for about the same price. Kinda wish I could get a Unisolder with an RF output as well, now THAT would be best of all worlds! I found a T12 72watt Handskit avail for $17 NEW (+$8 Shipping, so $25 Shipped) on Facebook Marketplace (LOL!) with stand/brass sponge/solder/esd-strap/and TWO tips. Handle looks like a hybrid between metcal and JBC - I tried out a Handskit TS100 clone and was doing alright for an hour or two then malfunctioned constantly and finally fully broke within a week of use. Makes me not trust Handskit.
Good point. The modification to make it safe is straightforward and it runs at a decent price point. I did feed back to the manufacturer so I'll report back if I hear anything.
How many watts does this pull from the wall when first turned on? I just got one of these clones and it pulls over 200W from the wall for about 2s, heats up crazy fast in under 3s.
@@sdgelectronics Thanks pal. The model is OSS team T245, the board is almost identical to the one in this review, it cost approx £60 with a nice stand included. A very nice iron for the price.
hey sir nice review ..i saw a lot of your reviews t12 , axiun ect .. and im so confused about what soldering station i should get ! i just got into electronics and want something reliable and would do most of the jobs ty ...
So far the Aixun represents really good value for money and great performance. But I think the Jabe UD-1200 or Best BST-933B are possibly higher quality and have a proper transformer in it. It'd also be recommended to find a good quality second hand Metcal or JBC unit on eBay.
I understand your situation as makers have been moving "up" the power chain of late, but rest assured that a generic T12 from Quecoo/Quicko or KSGER will still do standard soldering better than almost any iron from prior decades *and* the generic T12 (AKA Hakko T15) tips are inexpensive and available in a wide array of styles. Makers have been gravitating towards the JBC simply because generic stations are now becoming common and the genuine T245 tips can transfer a *lot* of heat into difficult joints as shown in SDG's videos, but most soldering does not require >100-watt tips. SDG's high-thermal-capacity PCB is more challenging that almost anything that you will be soldering in the real world. Depending upon your budget, you can choose anything from a $45-50 Quicko with 3-5 included tips *of* *your* *choice* to an Aixun or Jabe T245 clone, but bear in mind that the wide selection of generic T12 tips will work just fine if you calibrate each of them while very few styles of generic JBC tips are currently available and genuine JBC tips are quite expensive. You may only need 1 genuine JBC tip and it may last you a decade, but it also might cost half as much as the rest of your station once you add tax and shipping from a dealer; not a bad thing considering that the tip is the most important component, but something to consider as you can probably stick with generic tips for a T12. At $3 apiece, they're easily replaceable. So, while I'm quite interested in the Aixun stations, I still consider the generic T12 stations to be the best overall value for typical soldering. I do wish that they would adapt to offer those stations with JBC handpieces, however, and that whoever is making the ubiquitous 3-piece generic JBC tip kit would add other styles to their selection. The fine-tipped conical and knife tips are perhaps the worst possible styles they could have chosen and it boggles the mind why they did so. Only a masochist would have a long, thin conical tip sitting in their bench iron from day to day.
some of them ship with a different psu that they glue down inside it doesn't slide out at all I have had a few in hand two had the glue down psi and one this one also some have a slightly different firmware the one with the glued in pcb lacks a couple settings all three cam from the same seller so they seem to ship at random. one has an option to turn off the buzzer where the others don't. overall pretty meh imo
![ง้อ (ALRIGHT) - FOURTH Prod. by URBOYTJ [ OFFICIAL MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qs8ZeV6Dqj8/mqdefault.jpg)
Great review - thanks. On my unit there is an extra wire from the mains earth to the front control panel, which extends the earth protection to the tip of the bit, but still does not earth the case. I followed your mod with the earth wire via a lug to one piece of the case but I also added a piece of adhesive copper tape (slug and snail gardening protection for plant pots!) at the back to connect the upper and lower halves of the case and added a couple of plain washers to the two screws to prevent the copper tape being torn as the screws are tightened. Now everything about the case is earthed, including the metal part of the 5-pin socket. None of my extra mods has affected the sleep operation when the iron is parked in the cradle.
12:05 there is actually another fuse in the IEC power connector itself, between the power switch and the outlet (inlet?). Also for many European countries the power cord itself would not be polarized, so that L and N would be randomly connected anyways.
I settled down with Yihua 939D+ and am fairly happy with it, to a point where I threw all my standalone irons into garbage.
Another good soldering review. Those spring type stands tend to be a bit tedious for getting cables caught in. Looks to me like they have used heat shrink as a cable strain on the handpiece 🙄
I remember seeing those handles with a rubber o-ring around the part where the tip attaches to prevent fumes entering the handle and corroding the innards.
The genuine JBC has it, but I've not seen it on any clones.
JBC added this feature to improve the product, but I suspect that the Chinese clones may never do so as it's obvious that they're cost-optimizing these handpieces to an unreasonable degree if they can't even use a "real" strain relief or bother to connect the standby wire to the metal ring.
@@antibrevity wait a minute If we buy this model with the 210 version we can ad to the same output a t245 handle .
Nice and thorough review! Thanks for all the effort you put into these videos!
I had a Handskit T12 station for 1 day. Was faulty from the start. Sent it back.
You havw got to be running out of space for soldering stations by now. Nice to see banggood are placing goods on the market that don't meet CE or UKCA. Also a fuse on the netural conductor is also not allowed by the standards for the UK as if it blows it leaves the power supply live to 240V.
I have to walk through a sea of soldering irons to get to my desk every day.
Looks like it’s still better to find a genuine JBC second hand then buying clones. Although I do enjoy the Miniware T100 for it’s portability.
Not bad , i was lucky enough to snag a JBC HD-2B for around 100 quid on fleabay so my high thermal mass soldering is sorted :).
That’s waay better than these cheap chinese ones. Enjoy using it!
Wow I've never seen such good deals on electronics tools/instruments. When WS this? How did you manage to get it?.
Damn, how did I miss that one :) Congratz on the new system... I would have loved to see that, was busy drooling over metcal's the last couple weeks - still not sure if I am willing to spend the coin on the device without ever seeing on in real life lol - can always "rent" from amazon but I only do that if there is a chance I might keep it.
Hell the only one I see now is $1200 + $80 shipping from Croatia - used, grumble.
Lucky son of a gun! That's a steal of a price!
@@therealb888 maybe because it uses C470 cartridges and is not what people are looking for
That board blew the tip off one of my probe master leads haha. The board is almost identical. It was the wrong board for the station. They just throw those things together. I bought it for fun on sale. I was checking the voltage between earth and live. I grounded it as well. Both fuses blew at the same time.
thank you for this video, price even cheaper than an Aixun but with less bells and whistles.
Knife tips are great, just a matter of personal taste & training.
I think I found my next soldering station ... JBC's new wireless soldering station that uses the 210 tips. Also has a 115 version too it seems.
The strain relief almost looks like a piece of heat shink
Just what i thought!
Amazing how much variation there is among Chinese clones. You'd think it would all be the same. But they can't seem to resist the temptation to shave an extra penny off the cost of manufacturing the junk. Exactly why Chinese goods have the reputation they do.
Surely the fact the iron tip itself is triggering the sleep mode (rather than the collar) means the handpiece is miswired. Shouldn't the tip be grounded (for ESD) to mains earth?
I'm not sure how you conclude with a recommendation either when it has many faults - ungrounded chassis, ineffective handpiece cable strain relief, non-functional sleep mode, under-powered so it can't take advantage of the tip's performance. Maybe you meant it is fairly good "for the money".
In fact, now I watch again, they didn't even solder two out of five pins of the handpiece connector to the controller board. I'm surprised anything other than heating and temp sensing works.
There is no mains earth available at the control board, so no posibility for ESD safety.
So stay far from this
It appears the handpiece itself has no connection to the collar, so there is only the three pins of the cartridge connected.
Nice review, it would be nice to see a review of a station that would work with the heavy-duty JBC T470 handle. The cartridges use a 42 volt supply.
I'm on the hunt for something that looks worthwhile, so if you see anything let me know. I may get the genuine JBC station for comparison.
@@sdgelectronics I have only ever seen bare modules that work with T470.
@@sdgelectronics As much as I would love to see that, your going to empty my pockets here if you keep showing me things I cant live without! :) Thank you for all your time and work checking out this stuff for us!
I wonder how this compares to a used Weller, they are about the same price, I cant help thinking a weller would be easier to use.
21:27 How about stuffing the lower part of the holder with a Brass Tip Cleaner Wire Sponge Ball?
It would make the tip contact the stand, and clean the tip at the same time :-)
Not a bad budget station. Thanks for sharing.😄
I think the SMT NTC device for cold junction compensation should be close to the connector solder connections, yet it is on the opposite side of the board. Does somebody know why?
For large thermal mass soldering a common technique is to preheat the board to below reflow and then solder locally with an iron or hot air. You don't really want to use an iron on a pad this large.
Excellent presentation, again! many thanks.
How changing tool mods in the menu?
Its approx $150 usd total. Not worth the headaches. The China market has forgotten why we bought these units. CHEAP PRICES. Happily running a Hakko 951.
Awesome as usual 👍👍👍 Sir please make a video on SUGON T36 or T3602
could you tell plz what exactly chip inside, STM32?thnx
for phone repair it do the job
ty for reviewing.
Hello. I have a miniware ts101 and I would need more soldering power. Is there a difference in power if I buy this soldering iron vs ts101? I know you have both. Thank you!
this station give you the same power or a bit more ts101 have 65-90w 24-28v almost the same ... try check something from AIXUN 200W or something like this
Can you make rating of jbc clones? I mean compare as many clones as you can with c115/c210/c245 in one video?Pros and cons based on your experience?
bro, i love your audio
Hello from Izmir / Turkey. Thank you for the information you have provided. Can you open translations with Turkish subtitles?
I'll see if I can enable it, but I don't think it does auto translate.
I could very well have simply missed you mentioning this, but is the handpiece cable nice and flexible (and thus most likely made from silicone), or is it very stiff (and thus probably PVC), or perhaps it is hard to tell? I went back but I couldn't find this being mentioned in the video.
I was additionally wondering a little bit why you haven't tried to put a current clamp onto that fat red wire going from the PSU to the control PCB? This would immediately dispell the obvious 240 watt marketing lies and yield us an accurate number for the honest wattage this station is actually capable of. Now all we know that it very much isn't 240 watts, and that a more reasonable ballpark would be a more reasonable and much lower wattage, but what is a reasonable range estimate? Perhaps somewhere between 30 to 60 watts?
I had it plugged into the power meter during soldering. It registered 60W peak when soldering with the large JBC tip. The handpiece cable is not pure silicone, but it is pretty flexible. Definitely not PVC though.
@@sdgelectronics aha, so that was what you meant by that! I do indeed remember something about you mentioning a wattage, but I just assumed it was the maximum power rating of that special genuine JBC soldering tip or something. Until the moment where you just mentioned it in your comment, I had no clue whatsoever that you had it also attached to a kill-a-watt or other power metering device! Thank you for your quick reply and follow up to my question, by the way! I really hope you know that the hard work you put into these extremely thorough, hands-on and very detailed soldering station reviews of yours certainly does not go unnoticed! Your hard work making these videos is very, very much appreciated! Thank you very much 👍😁😁
Hi ; can you test sugon t1602 soldering station ?
So, is there low current 110V AC leaking to tip via noise supression cap? Making the station kill sensitive parts?
I will measure, but I don't think so.
Hey Steve, did you see that the Aixun T3A is now being more widely sold with the B-set handpiece holder?
Yes, I saw there's a few sellers now. Thanks
Still hoping you release an open source design so I can build myself a T245 station.
It's on hold temporarily, several of the IC's I had planned to use are unavailable. Hopefully I can make some progress in a month or two.
@@sdgelectronics darn shortage. fingers crossed!
Exelente review
Cheers.
I have watched your videos countless times looking at different products I am interested in, I thank you very much for reviewing them for the audience!
What is the Most Capable soldering iron you have worked with yet? If an RF type, please also list the best non RF type. (I have a feeling its the Metcal 52xx model) It looked like the Auxin T3A was the most capable for the money in your videos? I was also looking at BST-993 JBC clone too, not sure if either can live up to JBC and are they comparable to the powerful JBC or just the compact ones (heard the compact were about 25% as powerful as the fully capable JBC's?) I CANT DECIDE and even the used Metcal MX500 are quite expensive, often without handle. Could either buy one new Metcal OR......a JBC clone + a couple JBC brand tips + Microscope + Camera for scope to output to screen & record + some other useful tools for all of those for about the same price.
Kinda wish I could get a Unisolder with an RF output as well, now THAT would be best of all worlds!
I found a T12 72watt Handskit avail for $17 NEW (+$8 Shipping, so $25 Shipped) on Facebook Marketplace (LOL!) with stand/brass sponge/solder/esd-strap/and TWO tips. Handle looks like a hybrid between metcal and JBC - I tried out a Handskit TS100 clone and was doing alright for an hour or two then malfunctioned constantly and finally fully broke within a week of use. Makes me not trust Handskit.
I wonder how annoyed the person that designed the control-unit PCB is, because C7 and R17 are rotated by 90° :D
I value your opinion but I don't understand why you would recommend this product with a ground fault straight from the factory
Good point. The modification to make it safe is straightforward and it runs at a decent price point. I did feed back to the manufacturer so I'll report back if I hear anything.
That user interface with the C style comments (/* */) is really odd!
How many watts does this pull from the wall when first turned on? I just got one of these clones and it pulls over 200W from the wall for about 2s, heats up crazy fast in under 3s.
I think this one was about 160W
@@sdgelectronics Thanks pal. The model is OSS team T245, the board is almost identical to the one in this review, it cost approx £60 with a nice stand included. A very nice iron for the price.
Try mechanic soldering station
Can you use jbc tweezer irons with this ??
It doesn't appear to be suitable.
I think that is a typical 5A SMPS.
In your opinion, does it worth to replace it by an T12 soldering station?
I prefer to solder with the JBC cartridges over the T12, but if you don't have the budget for JBC tips, then the T12 is fine.
hey sir nice review ..i saw a lot of your reviews t12 , axiun ect .. and im so confused about what soldering station i should get ! i just got into electronics and want something reliable and would do most of the jobs ty ...
So far the Aixun represents really good value for money and great performance. But I think the Jabe UD-1200 or Best BST-933B are possibly higher quality and have a proper transformer in it. It'd also be recommended to find a good quality second hand Metcal or JBC unit on eBay.
@@sdgelectronics ty for taking the time to answer man love your vids
I understand your situation as makers have been moving "up" the power chain of late, but rest assured that a generic T12 from Quecoo/Quicko or KSGER will still do standard soldering better than almost any iron from prior decades *and* the generic T12 (AKA Hakko T15) tips are inexpensive and available in a wide array of styles. Makers have been gravitating towards the JBC simply because generic stations are now becoming common and the genuine T245 tips can transfer a *lot* of heat into difficult joints as shown in SDG's videos, but most soldering does not require >100-watt tips. SDG's high-thermal-capacity PCB is more challenging that almost anything that you will be soldering in the real world.
Depending upon your budget, you can choose anything from a $45-50 Quicko with 3-5 included tips *of* *your* *choice* to an Aixun or Jabe T245 clone, but bear in mind that the wide selection of generic T12 tips will work just fine if you calibrate each of them while very few styles of generic JBC tips are currently available and genuine JBC tips are quite expensive. You may only need 1 genuine JBC tip and it may last you a decade, but it also might cost half as much as the rest of your station once you add tax and shipping from a dealer; not a bad thing considering that the tip is the most important component, but something to consider as you can probably stick with generic tips for a T12. At $3 apiece, they're easily replaceable.
So, while I'm quite interested in the Aixun stations, I still consider the generic T12 stations to be the best overall value for typical soldering. I do wish that they would adapt to offer those stations with JBC handpieces, however, and that whoever is making the ubiquitous 3-piece generic JBC tip kit would add other styles to their selection. The fine-tipped conical and knife tips are perhaps the worst possible styles they could have chosen and it boggles the mind why they did so. Only a masochist would have a long, thin conical tip sitting in their bench iron from day to day.
@@antibrevity thanks for the advice .. much appreciated ! im just gonna stick to the t12 as you said it does 90% of soldering jobs and it's cheaper
Hmm... I think I'll buy a STM32 Handskit T12 too. Not using 4 layer boards anytime soon.
Really too bad about the stand! I need a compact station
😍
some of them ship with a different psu that they glue down inside it doesn't slide out at all I have had a few in hand two had the glue down psi and one this one also some have a slightly different firmware the one with the glued in pcb lacks a couple settings all three cam from the same seller so they seem to ship at random. one has an option to turn off the buzzer where the others don't. overall pretty meh imo
Why bother? The Aixun is a much better product and doesn't cost much more;
It’s seriously flawed. If you are reading this, do not buy axiun T3A station!
Look into the groused PCB problem. “PCB killer” video by Tony.