My chinese 2 in 1 hot air rework station not heating out of the box. please help

[shahabmusic]

Got one of those cheap rework stations from ebay and has hot air and soldering iron both built into one unit.
soldering iron works fine but hot air not heating as soon as I took it out of the box. fan works but not heating.
I need this to work ASAP as I have my client phone here and needs repairing so sending the unit back to china for a replacement is not a option for me as it takes weeks until I get the new unit in my hands.

Please help me fix this crap.

[saturation]

Not sure which unit this is, but clearly you have to do your own repairs.  Hopefully, all that is wrong with yours is the wiring for the heater assembly is not properly connected; if not the heater is defective.   Be careful, as often such units are powered directly from mains voltage. If this units hot air gun is similar to the Atten 858D, see photos of the heater assembly in the archives and insure the wires are soldered as pictured.

[SLJ]

AS saturation said, it would help to know exactly which piece of crap it is...  Someone here might have the same one and be able to help.

[free_electron]

two in one gets a whole new meaning ...

a soldering iron including a first job fixing it...
hopefully it's not a bad solder joint... or you'd have a chicken and egg problem ...

[shahabmusic]

thanks guys for the help.
it is HERO 898D if my memory serves me right.
Well, after spending whole night on the unit, found a few solder joint were broken inside the unit itself. fixed them with my old soldering iron and it is now working fine.

[ftransform]

lol partial assembly required.


At least they gave you the tools to do it! O0

[Jon Chandler]

My hotair station has a sensor in the holder.  If the hand-piece isn't detected in the holder, it won't heat when it's picked up.

[saturation]

Good to read.  Those look-alike models posted on eevblog have had wiring and connection issues.  Good to hear it was just some bad joints.  Here's the model unit you mention and a list of clones.

thanks guys for the help.
it is HERO 898D if my memory serves me right.
Well, after spending whole night on the unit, found a few solder joint were broken inside the unit itself. fixed them with my old soldering iron and it is now working fine.

[SLJ]

The good thing about the X-TRONIC #6040 Rework Station shown in the video above is that you can talk to them, they are in the U.S., they answer the phone, and they stand behind their product.  I ordered a couple of these this week and they shipped the same day. The only drawback is I don't think they ship to Canada or outside the U.S.A.

I'll let you know how mine works after I get it on Monday.  I plan on talking one apart to see the quality.  I'll also be giving a 6040 out as one of the prizes in an upcoming contest.  I'll post the details on this forum next month.

[shahabmusic]

DO NOT BUY THIS PIECE OF S**T EVER.
I just had a few minutes of fireworks with this unit. 350degrees and sensor failed and you know what happened next... it jumped to 600degrees and flames were all around the handle. luckily my room is close to kitchen and could quickly sank it into kitchen sink and rinsed it with water. burned all my fingers now. F**k that s**t. will never ever buy rework station unless I find a well known brand.
I waste my $120 and lost two of my finger prints and burned my other fingers.

Hopefully someone will see this post before deciding to go ahead with these units.

[SLJ]

That sucks.  Post a photo of it if you can.

[T4P]

Interesting. Seems like a sensor burnout. Never heard of that one before

[ptricks]

ouch.
Bad programming . Anything that controls temperature should default to room temp if the sensor reading either is wrong or not present. Sadly some firmware says things like "
if (current < target)
 {
increasetemp();
}

if (current > target) {
lowertemp();
}


There is no handling of if the temp reads 0

[saturation]

I concur, the handle of this model looks like the Atten 858D type hot air gun.  I concur with ptrick too, I wouldn't be surprised if the firmware did not have such a failsafe function programmed.

I've never had to try this out but I wouldn't be surprised given the bad soldering encountered by the OP that the sense leads of the heating element to this unit were likely not connected/soldered.

FWIW, a name brand reworkstation will run near $1000, so getting something in the $100 range comes with big trade offs.  I spent a week troubleshooting my unit before I even turned it on.  It had some nasty assembly faults, but once fixed, its been working well.

As for runaway temps from a poor sensor and other newbie readers of this thread.  First, if such a failure did occur, and a unit simply went to maximum regardless of a setting, it would not suddenly ramp to >600C instantly, so the user has some time to react.  In evaluation 400+C is desperately hot, and can be sensed during the test phase when I got the unit by putting my hand about 1 foot from the smallest nozzle and move slowly toward the tip, the hotter it gets the farther you have to put your hand away to tolerate the heat.  You can try melting eutectic solder or spot check the temp if not with a thermocouple.

Second, to burst into flames is strange, I think something is admist is the assembly again.  The heater assembly is lined with ceramic, there is nothing to ignite inside the handle.  However, the shaft of the heat gun did have a oily film I presume as a rust retardant or to make it appear shiny.  When the unit is first used, the burning of this oily film gives the virign unit an odor than dissappears once the unit has been used.  This oil can potentially ignite.  Or if the user was using it around paper, the output of the gun past 480C could, at 6" or so, heat anything nearby to flame.

So word of warning to any 858D style owners out there, but it can be avoided by due diligence, that's the trade off between $100 and $1000 stations.

Interesting. Seems like a sensor burnout. Never heard of that one before

ouch.
Bad programming . Anything that controls temperature should default to room temp if the sensor reading either is wrong or not present. Sadly some firmware says things like "
if (current < target)
 {
increasetemp();
}

if (current > target) {
lowertemp();
}


There is no handling of if the temp reads 0

[T4P]

It's the Yihua ones that tick me off all the time! The yihua ones have a plethora of functionality issues but not really with Atten.
Such as overheating constantly (I did my calculations) in a warm area, heating element(s) DOA, weak fan/cheap i actually have to turn my previously alive YiHua 858D to 10 to get anything reflowed, Nasty plastic on the handle but you do know that there's a mica paper on the heating element right? Mica is a fire-retardant and it's quite odd that the one he had did a flame-out and a few months ago died on me after a TRIAC replacement and a heating element change from YiHua themselves! 
I didn't even get to use it at all after i replaced them two components and it just sat there blinking at me without doing anything! Piss poor quality
I have loads to write hate about it but i've sent it to the morgue (Yes, My electronics morgue! Not the dumpster!)

Well really, i'm pretty sure the one he has came from YiHua

And well, the company who designed the 858D first was YiHua, atten's just making their own versions which is much better in quality (Issues that concern danger ... i know  ... As long as it's functional that's the main topic)

And ... warning i might have bought a fake i don't know but some areas are good in quality but the rest of it is appalling just like a Chrysler 300C SRT8,
The X-TRONIC stations is OEM'd by YiHua but i think to stand for their products means not slashing quality left and right like YiHua does

I'll get a Atten 858D soon but anyway it's cheap as hell, the Yihua 858D is cheaper about 5 dollars my currency when the Atten model is about 25-30$
So yes, that's the real price of the sets going in shops

Not the $100 price tag...

[saturation]

Yes, know your ills well T4P, I have a WEP model, I think that's a Yihua one too isn't it?

When I received mine I gave it a detailed teardown, almost reverse engineering it.  You can see in my old photos in the eevblog archives; the sensor leads are so close to the power leads in the handle, some wires  were nearly shorted, so it could have cause your and the OP problems with the thermocouple; all that's needed is to clean out the wiring assembly, add insulation or cut a creepage groove, check the PCB for shorts and cold solder joints, once turned on its worked well.  I haven't had to replace any parts so far so I wonder if your failures are caused by assembly issues that later kill your parts, other than bad parts to begin with.

Yes, the mica paper, that's the "ceramic" I was talking about, but mica is right which strictly speaking is not a ceramic, my err.

[T4P]

That's alright with me  And yeah, it's an YiHua
I guess it's time to open a sticky with the issues found on YiHua OEM/rebadged stations?

[saturation]

I found the photos from the archive using google:



The above is the handset board as made, before repairs. Yellow and red wire on the right are part of the sensor wires.  Note conductive wire surfaces are exposed between all those wires and can be shorted easily; the sensor wires are the equivalent thinner yellow, b, and red wire on the left.  The thicker red wires on the left carry mains voltage to the heater, the grey wire on the right carry mains voltage.  The blue and black wire at the top are the 24VDC that powers the fan.

If these wires are somehow shorted or crossed it would screw up the thermocouple sense and the fan speed and its fairly easy to do if the assembly is twisted when its reinserted into the handle after soldering.


Calibration:


Per Hakko's procedures, the temp should be read no farther than the diameter of the nozzle opening, here ~ 1cm.  Reading 123.9C for setting of 125 if good enough for me!

[T4P]

I guess after receiving my VC8145 (Yes i dropped my cash and went ahead) i'll be buying a 858D and tearing it down to check for potential faults
But apparently the 858D i had didn't look so dangerous, i still have the handle here, want a picture?

[Bored@Work]

I guess after receiving my VC8145

Any plans for using the empty space inside?
http://thegeekway.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/oIMG_1284_1_1.jpg

[RCMR]

You could keep your lunch in there -- but only to a limited degree of accuracy and precision 

[Bored@Work]

Long-term stability of the lunch is certainly also an issue.

[T4P]

I guess after receiving my VC8145

Any plans for using the empty space inside?
http://thegeekway.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/oIMG_1284_1_1.jpg

I can eat an years worth of bento in there! 
Well honestly speaking i'm not planning on anything but a 12-5-3.3V good quality PSU(Tape drive...) fits in there 

[amyk]

As for runaway temps from a poor sensor and other newbie readers of this thread.  First, if such a failure did occur, and a unit simply went to maximum regardless of a setting, it would not suddenly ramp to >600C instantly, so the user has some time to react.  In evaluation 400+C is desperately hot, and can be sensed during the test phase when I got the unit by putting my hand about 1 foot from the smallest nozzle and move slowly toward the tip, the hotter it gets the farther you have to put your hand away to tolerate the heat.  You can try melting eutectic solder or spot check the temp if not with a thermocouple.

Second, to burst into flames is strange, I think something is admist is the assembly again.  The heater assembly is lined with ceramic, there is nothing to ignite inside the handle.  However, the shaft of the heat gun did have a oily film I presume as a rust retardant or to make it appear shiny.  When the unit is first used, the burning of this oily film gives the virign unit an odor than dissappears once the unit has been used.  This oil can potentially ignite.  Or if the user was using it around paper, the output of the gun past 480C could, at 6" or so, heat anything nearby to flame.

Yes, this does seem like a very curious incident. I'd say getting shocked from improper wiring would be much higher chance than the unit catching fire. I've read stories of cheap soldering irons from DX melting their handles, but catastrophic failure of cheap rework stations seems much less prevalent. I found maybe 3 or 4 mentions online of this failure mode, only 1 with picture. This is out of probably hundreds or thousands sold, so I still think this isn't that big of a deal. Just make sure everything is wired correctly and soldered properly before turning on.

Also odd is the fact that the OP hasn't posted since...

[saturation]

Sure please do.

Aside, the VC8145 is certainly a strange instrument, but not unlike another Uni-T bench DMM I've seen elsewhere.  ,The VC  has decent specs on paper.  If its true, the empty space wouldn't be so bad; many low cost makes buy chassis off the shelf and use whatever fits best and is cheap.

The more reputable Instek 1003 SFG was also designed around a generic chassis and has space to spare too, but not as obscene 

 

I guess after receiving my VC8145 (Yes i dropped my cash and went ahead) i'll be buying a 858D and tearing it down to check for potential faults
But apparently the 858D i had didn't look so dangerous, i still have the handle here, want a picture?