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EEVblog #242 – Hakko FX-888 Soldering Iron Hack
Posted on February 3rd, 2012 32 comments
Dave got fed up not knowing if his Hakko FX-888 iron was left on or not. So hacked the LED to toggle RED/GREEN, so it’s always on.
Toshiyuki Kita link29 responses to “EEVblog #242 – Hakko FX-888 Soldering Iron Hack”
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Hi!
As nearly everytime, again a very nice video, btw. how long does it usually take to produce such a video of 26mins?
What would you guess why are they doing PWM on the original led?
Regards from Germany,
Manuel -
Do you screw up explaining something and shoot it again, or it’s just straight cutting (i.e. no retakes)? I try to make my vids in one shot by rehearsing the whole thing several times.
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Wilfred February 3rd, 2012 at 16:09
At around 10:13 there is a breakup of the video. Seems to be at an edit point. It is only momentary but I’ve noticed it once or twice before, recently.
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I love my MPJA ZD-929C. It’s got all the features and you can tell that it’s powered on without modification. Plus it’s less expensive than the Hakko too.
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Great video. Amazing that they didn’t have it working this way already. My Duratech iron from Jaycar has this type of led system. But if you think it will stop you forgetting to turn it off … well, at least for me it’s a while sometimes before I notice. Lol.
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Hey Dave,
I had a similar issue on one of my art projects. Being the starving artist, I REALLY KISS’ed a solution. I mounted a 3mm LED between the legs of a 5mm LED. With a little higher current, the small one shines quite nicely trough the large one! -
I have the smae unit and the same problem: don’t know how many times I’ve come into my lab in the morning and noticed a quick red flash! I think, though, in my situation, that as well as needing a LED on all the time it needs to be above the huge knob: I find that the knob hides the LED a lot of the time even when it is on.
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Can’t even type my own name! Nor the word “same”! As Dave would say…FAIL!
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Dave, a blog of you making a blog is not a bad idea. Kind of a “day in the life” so we can see how much work is involved. Sounds like it is a fair bit of work, not to mention the electronics.
…mike
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Pyr0Beast February 5th, 2012 at 03:55
Why not just simply pull-down the red led to ground with 4.7kOhm resistor ?
Or run a green led in series with the red one ?
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Nice!
Since there’s an internal fuse, you might want to put a flashing red LED/resistor combo. in parallel with the internal fuse next time you have the case open.
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KJ6EAD February 5th, 2012 at 09:43
A similar but simpler modification has been designed for the venerable Hakko 936 for those of us that have that predecessor to the FX-888.
http://www.n0ss.net/hakko_936_schem-pcb_&_mod_v1r7.pdf
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It seems this version of the Blog does not support long and spooky URLs. Here is a short version from Google : http://goo.gl/z4DOQ
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I think you can replace the power swich of the station with a iluminated one, I have one at home the same size with the one Fx-888 uses. I’ve searched for an image, this is the closest I have found: http://tiny.cc/zwf5t
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Richard February 9th, 2012 at 03:34
http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=511954
I used the Belkin Conserve socket to power things on my bench for 30min. Presss the button and everything is active. After 30min. it shuts off. 15A rating means it can run most things on the bench.
I use the same thing on my mp3/phone/accessory charging station.
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Facundo February 9th, 2012 at 16:36
I think a 220 ohm resistor with a green led, at the output of the power supply it is really easy to figure out, a 20 min video of a led modification ? Mmmm.. where are those old good videos ?
FAIL..
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KJ6EAD February 14th, 2012 at 13:29
Though I don’t have that particular solder station model, I still appreciate the problem solving process and the effort it takes to describe it.
Describing it as a failure is obviously harsh and churlish.
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Are you shure it’s an open collector ?
Perhaps it’s a push pull output? -
P. Marian May 18th, 2012 at 17:14
Does this soldering station work on 220V? I want to buy one but it says 120V.
Offtopic: pls install the “Subscribe to comments” plugin so we can get emails when there are new comments on specific article. Thanks.
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klee27x December 5th, 2012 at 10:07
Hi, Dave.
I’m not sure if I’m the first to post this, but there’s a much more elegant solution for the LED, if you use a common anode tricolor LED, which are very common.
Clip the blue cathode completely off the tricolor LED. Clip the green cathode short. Then solder the anode and the red cathode onto the board where the red LED normally goes.
Short the low-side current limiting resistor. Cut the high side track to isolate the anode from the 9V rail. Solder your current limiting resistor on the high side. Reuse the 2.2L off the board, if you want.
Solder a wire between the green cathode and ground.
Assuming the open collector output is CMOS (voltage drop lower than 0.2V), the green LED will light up when the heater is off. When the heater switches on, the green LED will turn completely off and the red LED will turn on. Cuz the FVD of the red LED is abour 0.3V less than the green, and you’re using a common limiting resistor on the high side.
If the open colector output is a BJT, you might need to put a silicon diode between the green cathode and ground. Or use the blue instead of green.
Either way, you’re adding at most one diode to the component count. There’s no transistor needed, and there’s no parasitic drain through a base resisor. No parasitic drain through the green LED current limiting resistor when the red LED is on.
Just swap out the LED, cut a trace, move the resistor, solder the wire. And Bob’s your uncle.
3 Trackbacks / Pingbacks
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[...] Jones from eevblog.com has described a modification to the FX-888 that allows an LED to show when the iron is on, not just [...]
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[...] I recently looked at the Hakko units. The FX-888 is a well made unit (see this hack at the eevBlog), even though it looks a bit like a toy. I also liked the FX-951, with the digital display. The [...]
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[...] Next step for this one is the Hakko FX-888 LED hack. [...]
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Manuel February 3rd, 2012 at 11:00