Atten vs W.E.P 858d

[mikeys]

Has anyone bought the WEP 858d off of ebay? They look very similar to the Atten but the price difference suggests that it's built waay down to a price (even further than the Atten one must be) rather than just being a rebrand.

Link http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-Ship-W-E-P-858D-SMD-Hot-Rework-Digital-Station-Air-Solder-Blower-Gun-as-Atten-/121283625716?hash=item1c3d1142f4:g:AK4AAOSwuMFUhRfG

[IDEngineer]

There are quite a few sellers of that exact hot air soldering station. The front panel has different names, but they appear identical.

I just purchased one for 35 USD. I had seen the various notes about poor grounding, switching the neutral instead of the hot power lead, etc. so I went through the unit before I ever even turned it on. They were indeed switching (and fusing) the neutral side of the line connection, so I reversed that. Thankfully the tip is grounded to the case and the ground lug on the power cable, but I still went through and confirmed reliable metal-to-metal connections all the way through (there have been some reports of oversprayed paint insulating the grounds).

The design inside is nothing special, but nothing awful. Single sided PCB (with no silkscreening!) made of what appears to be XXXP (as opposed to FR-4/G10 that most are used to), not too densely packed, reasonable wire lengths (i.e. not stretched too tight), and so on. I've seen much worse.

Afterwards, I powered it up. It works great. Gets hot nice and fast, the reed switch in the handle turns off the heating element (and eventually the fan once things cool down), the temperature adjusts easily, and so forth.

I think what we have here is a decent (read: fine for the price) design, but the quality control is awful. The tradeoff for the great price on a hot air (de)soldering station is that you must invest 30-60 minutes going through it to confirm all is well.

I would spend the money again without hesitation.

[mstoer]

I have a WEP 858D as well that I bought just about 2 years ago.   Based on some reviews I checked the inside at the time to make sure the wiring was secured and connected correctly (I believe some models/re-brands had some issue with the ground wire).

My unit switches the hot (not neutral) wire.  I would even say the wire length inside is generous.  The PCB looks rather "crappy", the there are what appear to be flux stains all over and it's not the FR4 I would recognize.   There is nothing special about the board, the PCB is rather sparsely populated for it's size.   It works fine, it heats fast and I've gotten used to using it for desoldering, soldering and even heatshrinking.  I paid $60 CDN at the time for it from Amazon and it was worth it.

[bitwelder]

A search on eBay for this station finds also many offers for the hot gun part only (i.e. without the base), and in several of those the picture shows they have a DIN connector. Which 'brands' sell the 858d base station with the connector? As far I could see most vendors have the hot gun directly soldered it.

[Cerebus]

I bought an 858D, WEP branded, from this (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170941205406) listing on ebay UK last week.

It has NONE of the nasties that people have found with 858D clones. All the metalwork is grounded and has low impedance to the mains lead earth. All the safety critical earth points have crimps on the wires and threadlock on the nuts. The chassis fuse is, correctly, in the live lead. Generally the internal construction is neat and clean, and the triac and power transistor are ST branded and look like the genuine articles. Plenty of heat shrink tubing where it ought to be.

It works well enough, although I haven't checked the calibration yet - my thermocouple meter died last week which weirdly is what prompted this purchase as I didn't fancy desoldering its dead SOT-89 regulator from a cheap SRBP board with my iron.

Safe and well worth the £30 GBP it cost.

[singapol]

I believe Atten has fixed the wiring issue...bought one and checked the wiring and all is in order.
But do  inspect the Atten as there may be old versions or stock units.