Author Topic: RTFM idiot!  (Read 9956 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline AlfBazTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2183
  • Country: au
RTFM idiot!
« on: April 20, 2014, 01:04:04 am »
Yes I'm referring to myself

So I ordered a Hako 888D, gave the pamphlet/manual a brief glance and away I went.
Not long after I'm thinking to myself, these tips aren't very good, they seem to go off colour, gunk up real quick and are terribly hard to "wet" after a couple of uses

Thinking that leaving the iron sitting in its holder for a few minutes may be causing an issue I decided to read about the presets so I could dial it down to a low temperature rather than turn it off.

At this stage I come across how to calibrate the temperature and realised that's what I was doing. Press and hold enter instead of up arrow. So the display said 350 but I must of "calibrated" it to its max!  :palm:
 

Offline con-f-use

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 807
  • Country: at
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #1 on: April 20, 2014, 01:09:05 am »
As Yoda said: Sith happens. A friend of mine published results that were off by two orders of magnitudes. He wrote about how extraordinary his results were.
At least you didn't tell your peers about it.

... oh wait?!  ;)

We've all been there.  :-BROKE  :clap:
« Last Edit: April 20, 2014, 01:11:04 am by con-f-use »
 

Offline AlfBazTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2183
  • Country: au
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #2 on: April 20, 2014, 01:23:25 am »
... oh wait?!  ;)
:palm:
At least I'm a consistent idiot :)
 

Offline nanofrog

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5446
  • Country: us
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #3 on: April 20, 2014, 01:37:48 am »
1. You figured out your mistake.
2. It's fixable.

Learned your lesson, and isn't going to cost a fortune to rectify (maybe a new tip or two, assuming they're past reconditioning). Not that bad of an event all things considered, so don't beat yourself up over it IMHO.  :)
 

Offline aroby

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 214
  • Country: us
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #4 on: April 20, 2014, 01:45:18 am »
So I ordered a Hako 888D, gave the pamphlet/manual a brief glance and away I went.
Not long after I'm thinking to myself, these tips aren't very good, they seem to go off colour, gunk up real quick and are terribly hard to "wet" after a couple of uses

Mine has the same symptoms.  I think I know what I'll be doing tomorrow morning.  I wonder where I put the manual ...

Anthony
 

Offline IanB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11790
  • Country: us
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #5 on: April 20, 2014, 01:50:52 am »
And this, friends, is why the original FX-888 was a much better product. Why do marketing people feel compelled to take something with a simple, easy to understand user interface and turn it into something with a complicated interface that is easy to screw up?
 

Offline AlfBazTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2183
  • Country: au
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #6 on: April 20, 2014, 01:55:01 am »
And this, friends, is why the original FX-888 was a much better product. Why do marketing people feel compelled to take something with a simple, easy to understand user interface and turn it into something with a complicated interface that is easy to screw up?
Yep.

Aside from the initial choice of button to press the procedure to calibrate is precisely the same as it is to set the temperature
 

Offline TerraHertz

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3958
  • Country: au
  • Why shouldn't we question everything?
    • It's not really a Blog
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #7 on: April 20, 2014, 04:58:52 am »
Why do marketing people feel compelled to take something with a simple, easy to understand user interface and turn it into something with a complicated interface that is easy to screw up?

When screwing up means you are going to have to buy more stuff from them, to replace the bits that failed?
Why do consumers fail to understand what marketing people try to achieve? Selling more product is their job, and there are multiple ways to achieve that. One is called planned obsolescence.

There's a rather good hour-long documentary called 'The Light Bulb Conspiracy' on other examples of the same thing.  Youtube   watch?v=vfbbF3oxf-E or just search for the title.

Comment deleted: Don't push your luck.

« Last Edit: April 20, 2014, 05:15:22 am by GeoffS »
Collecting old scopes, logic analyzers, and unfinished projects. http://everist.org
 

Offline amyk

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8240
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #8 on: April 20, 2014, 07:05:11 am »
Aside from the initial choice of button to press the procedure to calibrate is precisely the same as it is to set the temperature
:palm:

And then you wonder why (aside from the 888D and other digital Hakko clones) the majority of Chinese stations with a digital display still have a big old-fashioned analogue knob, while only Hakko seems to be trying to cram everything into as few buttons as possible...
 

Offline lapm

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 564
  • Country: fi
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #9 on: April 20, 2014, 07:14:02 am »
Part of normal learning cycle... I have lost count how many times i have goofed up something in electronics. Incorrectly set instruments, wrong settings, just plain reading it wrong, to putting regulator and other components wrong way in. Not to mention mistakes i have done on coding something: Various assembly languages, C, PHP, Perl...

Once spend day looking bug in firmware i had done. I had forgotten one single command from all that code...

Sometimes in afterwords just wondering, why the heck i didint notice that as its happening...
Electronics, Linux, Programming, Science... im interested all of it...
 

Offline Psi

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9889
  • Country: nz
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #10 on: April 20, 2014, 10:18:41 am »
Even running at max temp a tip wont die right away, they just age faster.

I accidentally left my hakko running at 450C all day once. I forgot to set it back after doing a quick job needing high temp.

The tip looked all black when i noticed 8 hours later but a quick clean and re-tin and it was still good.
I'm sure it shortened the lifespan but didn't seem to have any immediate effect on the tip tinning and use afterwards.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2014, 10:20:23 am by Psi »
Greek letter 'Psi' (not Pounds per Square Inch)
 

Offline VK5RC

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2672
  • Country: au
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #11 on: April 20, 2014, 10:30:05 am »
One really good review of an amateur radio transceiver, written by an EE ex HP, started with the paragraph to see if he could get it on air without looking at the manual.
While the marketing types want us to stuff up and buy more, these venues esp Dave are our opportunity to try and strike some sense into the final design!
Whoah! Watch where that landed we might need it later.
 

Offline AlfBazTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2183
  • Country: au
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #12 on: April 20, 2014, 10:50:52 am »
Even running at max temp a tip wont die right away, they just age faster.

I accidentally left my hakko running at 450C all day once. I forgot to set it back after doing a quick job needing high temp.

The tip looked all black when i noticed 8 hours later but a quick clean and re-tin and it was still good.
I'm sure it shortened the lifespan but didn't seem to have any immediate effect on the tip tinning and use afterwards.
The tips seem fine after cleaning. The conicle one suffered the most and was the hardest to clean (without getting too rough with it)
 

Offline XOIIO

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1625
  • Country: ca
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #13 on: April 20, 2014, 10:53:49 am »
Heh, if I had previously owned a soldering iron that used the up arrow, I probably would have done the exact same. I can't remember the last time I read a manual

Offline SeanB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 16272
  • Country: za
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #14 on: April 20, 2014, 12:04:14 pm »
I tend to read the manual first unless I have had similar equipment before and know roughly what to expect. Of course sometimes the manual is written in the worst possible way ( I have written some myself that came out as totally unusable unless you have a clue, just as they had to conform to a style sheet and fit a specified layout, but YMMV) and is essentially unusable, often condensing a whole range of models into one sheet, and often being 15 or 20 hardware and firmware versions out of date. Sometimes not even for the particular model you have there. Chinese make equipment is definitely up there, but even EU or USA made stuff suffers from this. Worst is when you get a 50 page manual, and it is basically the same thing in 70 languages, and the English side would fit on a postcard in large print.
 

Offline Shock

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4200
  • Country: au
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #15 on: April 20, 2014, 12:33:09 pm »
Soldering/Rework: Pace ADS200, Pace MBT350
Multimeters: Fluke 189, 87V, 117, 112   >>> WANTED STUFF <<<
Oszilloskopen: Lecroy 9314, Phillips PM3065, Tektronix 2215a, 314
 

Offline AlfBazTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2183
  • Country: au
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #16 on: April 20, 2014, 02:43:47 pm »
@ Shock

Nice one thanks, although in my situation a thermocouple did the trick
 

Offline lewis

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 704
  • Country: gb
  • Nullius in verba
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #17 on: April 20, 2014, 03:34:14 pm »
Not your fault Alfbaz, one shouldn't need to read a manual to use a bloody soldering iron.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.
 

Offline c4757p

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7799
  • Country: us
  • adieu
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #18 on: April 20, 2014, 03:38:11 pm »
Not your fault Alfbaz, one shouldn't need to read a manual to use a bloody soldering iron.

Agreed.

You shouldn't be able to accidentally recalibrate something. Calibration should require a nice song and dance found somewhere in the service manual along with the rest of the calibration procedure. That applies to soldering irons as much as it does to expensive multimeters - no, you don't have to pay a fortune to recal it, but you can destroy things thinking the temperature is lower than the display indicates.
No longer active here - try the IRC channel if you just can't be without me :)
 

Offline nanofrog

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5446
  • Country: us
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #19 on: April 20, 2014, 07:27:38 pm »
You shouldn't be able to accidentally recalibrate something. Calibration should require a nice song and dance found somewhere in the service manual along with the rest of the calibration procedure.
I would have to agree with this.

Basic operations should be intuitive on a soldering iron. Things like setback function settings, resets, ... , RTFM would be warranted IMHO, as you don't want the keystrokes to access such settings to be something common to prevent unwanted changes.

At least there doesn't seem to be a major cost issue for the OP though (perhaps a tip or two).

I get the need to build to a cost, but the UI on this station is a failure on Hakko's part, entry level model or not IMHO.
 

Offline electronics man

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 686
  • Country: gb
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #20 on: April 20, 2014, 09:35:16 pm »
Not your fault Alfbaz, one shouldn't need to read a manual to use a bloody soldering iron.

Agreed.

You shouldn't be able to accidentally recalibrate something. Calibration should require a nice song and dance found somewhere in the service manual along with the rest of the calibration procedure. That applies to soldering irons as much as it does to expensive multimeters - no, you don't have to pay a fortune to recal it, but you can destroy things thinking the temperature is lower than the display indicates.

a nice pot is what it should be
follow me on twitter @get_your_byte
 

Offline Rigby

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1476
  • Country: us
  • Learning, very new at this. Righteous Asshole, too
Re: RTFM idiot!
« Reply #21 on: April 21, 2014, 03:15:23 pm »
a nice pot is what it should be

A nice pot is what it was, until someone decided it needed improvement.  That's the way of non-technical people: improve something until it is useless, then blame the customers.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf