A petition to bring us back the knob!? A complaint to modern soldering stations

[EEVblog]

The knob on a modern digital soldering station could be implemented with a multi turn rotary sensor.

Multi-turn is not really needed, the single turn analog pots always provided enough resolution.
The problem with modern digital readouts though is that people then expect to be able to set 1degC resolution.

[daybyter]

I would combine the best of both worlds. A rotary encoder plus up/down buttons. So you can turn the knob to 283 dg C and then press 3* down to 280 dg if you want. You can also have predefined settings if you need them.

Until then, I'll try to keep my age old weller station running. If it fails, I have one of those Hobbyking stations as a backup. So only knobs for me.

[Kilrah]

LOL! Does no one study interaction design anymore? I guess penny pinching and speed to market are more important.

No, its just that they do what sells. Nowadays people will rather buy an original-looking thing with "modern" looking elements regardless of whether they may prove less convenient later - they sometimes even do when it's obvious it will be. Guess the world is becoming too boring, and given that actually doing things isn't considered that important anymore design has a nicely paved way.

There's a great example in the R/C world... There's a case design that has been used and reused with slight variations for about 20-30 years now, for the very good reason that it's just perfectly appriopriate for the job. 3 years ago a new product came out based again on that proven design and of which the strengths were rather the features and price where people get a LOT more than any one else's offering, but in the end the most common complaint is precisely that it looks old. A significant number of people have pretty clearly stated that they wouldn't purchase a new future product if it didn't have an "up-to-date" design... So that's what they'll get, it will probably be less appropriate, but they won't complain because usability is less important than looking cool next to the others at the field 

[bitseeker]

LOL! Does no one study interaction design anymore? I guess penny pinching and speed to market are more important.

No, its just that they do what sells. Nowadays people will rather buy an original-looking thing with "modern" looking elements regardless of whether they may prove less convenient later

Yes! Exactly the point I was making in an earlier comment. It's quite sad and seems to me a lack of sufficient creativity to maintain good usability while providing sufficient differentiation.

Now this is where China is able to, intentionally or not, benefit from reproducing earlier designs. Skip the cost of designing an interface from scratch and get the already optimized usability. Of course, some products still flop from poor software behind the interface. D'oh!

[Kilrah]

Yes! Exactly the point I was making in an earlier comment. It's quite sad and seems to me a lack of sufficient creativity to maintain good usability while providing sufficient differentiation.

To me we've just hit a plateau like in many fields. Everything's been tried, the bad solutions thrown away, and we know the good ones. But people get bored, they want change, so there's no choice other than bringing back bad solutions just for the sake of change - at which point people will eventually realize again that they're poor, go back to the tried and true solution (it's welcome change again!) and the cycle just repeats forever, helping fuel the system by calling for regular replacements. 

I see that in various fields, reliable, safe working systems have been designed and improved between the 70s and about 2000, and now that it "just works" it has become so boring that new people joining the field have no other way to feel involved and valuable than to try things that eventually mean repeating old mistakes, degrading the system, which means they can then "improve" it again... In the long term global view it's actually nothing more than bringing it back to where it was before them, but in their short term individual-scale view they've made a change.

The cycle is slow enough for most people not to notice it, over 10-20 years they'll just feel like there has been constant change and "improvement", when in reality it's just gone in a circle.

Another example is clothing/fashion, just the same. Architecture also to some point just slower, with periods where people "go wild", then get nostalgic and go back to "traditional", then get bored of it and go wild again...

Things started at the bottom, the level climbed steadily and rapidly during the last century or so, and now reached a plateau and just oscillates slightly around it.

[bitseeker]

Well, at least we can buy used gear FTW! My Hakko 926 still works great, though. Maybe when it dies, I'll get a 936.

[GEuser]

My last purchase was a Knob soldering iron by ATTEN , solely for that reason of the Op's .

[whitevamp]

The various 936 clones are still in production... if you want a knob you can still get one with a knob.

What I'd really like to see, however, is a station with an analogue temperature gauge.

this is why i like my old solder aid by ok industries.

[amyk]

Watch this video to get the point across about not have knobs:

https://youtu.be/WgoGhnlJHas?list=PLkVbIsAWN2lvK9wLg2pwcXJLut_-_P9G4&t=2618

It's quite informative and amusing.

Wonderful video. I didn't think Hakko would screw up so badly with the UI. Even the Chinese knobless stations have a straightforward pair of up/down buttons that do exactly what you would want, with calibration and other "advanced" features accessed by pressing both of them simultaneously. Why Hakko decided making the user set each digit of the temperature separately is a good idea is beyond me, unless their firmware programmers were too bored and just wanted to fill up the massive amount of flash space the MCU in the station has...

Soldering stations aren't the only things affected by this stupid overcomplex UI trend, here's another piece of heating equipment that far more people use daily:

http://ellis.fyi/blog/why-do-most-microwaves-have-such-a-terrible-user-interface/

And I did look at the FX-951 manual out of curiosity, it has phrases like "initiates a data entry mode", "end of sequence signal", and "low-temperature alarm tolerance setting mode" sprinkled among more amusing ones like "CAUTION: place the iron in the iron holder when not in use" and "CAUTION: do not set the temperature too high, the soldering iron will become very hot."

[Kilrah]

http://ellis.fyi/blog/why-do-most-microwaves-have-such-a-terrible-user-interface/

He got something wrong though:

What the heck is “Inverter Turbo Defrost” or “Inverter Melt & Soften”? No doubt some microwave engineer worked long hours coming up with these clever features, but seriously… why?

Nah! It's of course some marketing guy who said "We need our microwave oven to do a bazillion super fancy things others don't so we have an edge and sell lots, just make each of them do a different form of random thing, and we'll own the world!!11!ONE!!"

And the sad thing is that it works. Yes people in the store will see the tons of fancy features, buy that oven (with a bit of help from the seller who will reassure them they're useful since he makes more on the more expensive model), and promptly proceed to forget about and never use any of those things that would mean reading a manual to know what they do... so they can actually do random things that may be useless or even bad, no problem as they'll never be used anyway. 

[Sigmoid]

I personally make a point of never buying microwaves with button controls. My current one has rotary encoders and an led numeric display.

As for soldering stations, you really shouldn't need to adjust the temperature during work at all if the pid in the thing is any good. Most soldering stations even come with a temperature lock option for factory use - the foreman sets the standard required temperature for the work being done, and that's it.

(disclaimer: I do in fact have a soldering station with a knob, but that's just because this was the cheapest jbc available - and "cheapest jbc" still means friggin expensive... and friggin *awesome*...)

[setq]

As for soldering stations, you really shouldn't need to adjust the temperature during work at all if the pid in the thing is any good. Most soldering stations even come with a temperature lock option for factory use - the foreman sets the standard required temperature for the work being done, and that's it.

This is my approach. I use the setting "HOT".

[metrologist]

Yew guys and your NOBS! This is what every soldering station needs... 

[bitseeker]

Just wait, the next revolution in soldering stations is coming: IR remote control.

They're already included in many Arduino-clone kits. Someone's bound to add it for differentiation...and more buttons.

[bitseeker]

It's of course some marketing guy who said "We need our microwave oven to do a bazillion super fancy things others don't so we have an edge and sell lots, just make each of them do a different form of random thing, and we'll own the world!!11!ONE!!"

And the sad thing is that it works.

Yep, which is why the elegant one-knob microwave in the blog post was a commercial oven. It's actually designed to be efficient to operate, not an appliance store lure.

[Smokey]

One reason to lose the knob....
You don't have to have Metcal soldering irons calibrated for ISO since the temp regulation is built into the tips and not set by a knob.  One less thing to maintain.

[zapta]

One reason to lose the knob....
You don't have to have Metcal soldering irons calibrated for ISO since the temp regulation is built into the tips and not set by a knob.  One less thing to maintain.

... and one less temptation for feature creep

[blacksheeplogic]

Yew guys and your NOBS! This is what every soldering station needs... 

The WX will load iron specific profiles from USB stick which is about the only sane way to configure it. The older Weller stations can be setup via USB but the profiles are not iron specific.

I think an interface is a good alternative but it's still nice to have presets. Also, for me it's only workable if the profiles can be iron specific. Production a single profile might be ok but when swapping hand pieces I don't want to be reconfiguring my station.

[eKretz]

Got a knob on my Ersa i-Con 1 but really don't use it hardly. The only time I switch temps is when switching from leaded to leadfree solder or vise versa. I do prefer a knob to buttons though for sure.

[alank2]

Is the UI on anything important these days?  I still don't understand how people find browsing the Internet on their phones to be actually useful.  The lack of a real UI makes it completely annoying for me.

I use the WES51 which has a dial!



I seem to be one of the rare folks who doesn't care for the digital version WESD51 - I like the dial version better.

[joeqsmith]

Replaced my old Weller that had a knob with a Pace and three buttons.   Personally,  I like the Pace. 

[RobertHolcombe]

I seem to be one of the rare folks who doesn't care for the digital version WESD51 - I like the dial version better.

The WESD51 does have the same dial, but additionally has the digital temperature display instead of temperature graduation silkscreen on the front panel/dial.

[alank2]

You are right, it was the hakko that had the buttons which took forever to get set.

[Zero999]

These aren't no brand crap firesticks for ref; very good irons still made in the UK.

Sadly not the case any more, we used to stock Antex irons but in the last couple of years they started shipping us 'Made in China' stock. Although some are made in the UK a majority are not any more and they were not willing/able to guarantee UK made stock so we decided not to stock them any more as being Made in the UK was part of the justification for the higher cost.

Nothing wrong with things made in China but costs to produce in the UK are much higher, so Chinese made units should cost less but this reduced cost not being passed to the consumer in lower sale price, in fact prices go up ever year from Antex.

I've no idea why Antex are so expensive when they're so shit. I prefer Hakko any day.

The knob on a modern digital soldering station could be implemented with a multi turn rotary sensor.

Multi-turn is not really needed, the single turn analog pots always provided enough resolution.
The problem with modern digital readouts though is that people then expect to be able to set 1degC resolution.

I'd be happy with 5^oC increments. I also hate encoders. Even on a digital solder station, a pot can easily be connected to the MCU via an ADC.

[bitseeker]

I also hate encoders. Even on a digital solder station, a pot can easily be connected to the MCU via an ADC.

What do you hate about them and is that for all encoders or just certain types?