(UK)Hakko fx-888d

[alin_im]

hi guys,

do you know where i can buy a genuine Hakko fx-888d in UK I prefer not to tell me about ebay because i am afraid of the fake ones

[TopLoser]

Hakko website says a UK distributor is

http://www.dancap.co.uk

You didn't really look very hard did you?

[alin_im]

Hakko website says a UK distributor is

http://www.dancap.co.uk

You didn't really look very hard did you?

i do not trust a website made in notepad i was hopping to find something more professional like sparkfun but the delivery is very expensive (half the price of the product)

[PedroDaGr8]

Hakko website says a UK distributor is

http://www.dancap.co.uk

You didn't really look very hard did you?

i do not trust a website made in notepad i was hopping to find something more professional like sparkfun but the delivery is very expensive (half the price of the product)

If they are the authorized distributor then who cares? Have you seen Brymen's website? Here It looks like it is 1996 geocities but they make some of the best meters handheld meters in the world.

The dristributor that TopLoser linked to is their OFFICIAL distributor, that is ALL you need to care about. THey even list their prices (they carry both the Silver and the blue/yellow one) which many distributors don't do.

[rx8pilot]

i do not trust a website made in notepad i was hopping to find something more professional like sparkfun but the delivery is very expensive (half the price of the product)

That site tells me that you may need to fax your order over and pay with a check, but you will probably get a real Hakko product. Bad websites turn me away immediately. Not sure if that is a good reaction or not, but I want vendors to be current with the times.

[TopLoser]

They ask for a bank transfer, or a cheque (whatever that is these days!)

Nothing unusual, I often wish I could insist on bank transfers and save 3.5% charges on each sale.

[rx8pilot]

Bank transfers usually have a fixed fee (here in the USA anyhow). I only use them for large orders. For an FX-888 the bank fee would probably be more than 3.5%.

Total PITA for a soldering iron.

[TopLoser]

Totally free in the UK, and payment received within minutes.

For a bank transfer to another European country I pay a 3 euro charge and it's normally received same day.

Whenever I buy goods I always try and pay by bank transfer as a courtesy to the seller, PayPal might be convenient but it's a very expensive convenience.

[PedroDaGr8]

Bank transfers usually have a fixed fee (here in the USA anyhow). I only use them for large orders. For an FX-888 the bank fee would probably be more than 3.5%.

Total PITA for a soldering iron.

bank Transfers there are like check's here. Very common and more or less free. A colleague of mine visiting from Austria was quite surpised that rent is paid via check (which costs in Austria) and not bank transfer (which is free there)

[nanofrog]

If you don't want to deal with dancap, you could also purchase from batterfly.com ( would need to swap the plug). Should be a bit less expensive as well, at ~100GBP to your door if my math is right (98EUR + 16.66EUR shipping & 20% VAT). 

[smjcuk]

You can get respectable cheap clones here: http://www.pcb-soldering.co.uk

Mine has been a joy to use even coming from a nice temp controlled Weller TCP iron.

RoHS, fused IEC sockets, UK plugs and properly tagged earthing. They also ship tonnes of spares and have large stock. Plus you can go and collect if you live near Broxbourne. Nice people to deal with.

Only thing is tip temperature needed calibrating which took 5 mins with a thermocouple and a meter. Oh and their solder is crap so I got a big spool of loctite 60/40 multicore off eBay.

[JoeD]

Hakko has another official distributor in the UK if you want to deal with a company with a more conventional website.

 http://www.grosvenor-group.com

Dancap has been around for a long time and their service is good even if their practices are a bit old fashioned.

JoeD

[sotos]

For Hakko there’s also an Italian distributor here.

http://www.batterfly.com/shop/stazioni_saldanti

His also an EEVblog member, if you send him a message he can give you a better price.

Also, different payment methods.

[FlevasGR]

I bought mine from a shop called RobotStore which is based in Greece and it's an official SparkFun distributor. They send wordwide and the shiping is okay. Take a look: http://robotstore.gr/ 

[mariush]

Grosvenor Group has local presence here in Romania, but when I called them last year a nice gentlemen told me they only deal with companies.  It's the same in other countries as well.

Around the same time last year, I emailed Dancap but they didn't even bother to reply to my email. Shit website, shit customer service, out for good and for ever in my book, they don't exist for me. I guess they only sell to UK people, but still not even replying to an email is just rude. 

Anyway, the Grosvenor employee was willing to make an exception for me and make a special order but the best price he could for the fx-888 do was about 120-130 euro plus local VAT of 24% so about 160 euro or about 180-190$ at that time's exchange rate.  In contrast, the US version was available in stores like Sparkfan or Adafruit for $95 and an authorized distributor had the US version on eBay listed for around $82.  However, due to weight, the shipping costs were about $40-60.

I ended up buying a genuine Hakko 936 from a guy in Israel and replaced the plug with the Euro one and it still works great. I use this and a Pace HW50 (bought from eBay as well) depending on what I need to solder