Thanks for the review. I'm a big fan of Pace. Been using their products for several years. I suspect my current Pace will never need to be adjusted for temperature as well. I do have a few questions that sadly never were answered in Cliffs thread. Maybe you could help.
For my old Pace, there is a table showing the different tips and a compensation factor for them. Is this still done? I wonder if that is the "Temperature Match" you mention.
Your ST-45 is a 15 year old "SensaTemp" controlled system and we still support it with handpiece (PS-90) and tips. But as you suspected, the "Tip Offset Compensation" capability is buried in the "Temperature Match" on the newer stations. We intentionally did that because we no longer have a major need for Tip Offset. Our older plug-in-to-the-heater tips could have a 5 - 70 degree differential between the set and actual temperatures on the really massive PLCC/QFP/Tweezer tips. But with AccuDrive, you'd be hard pressed to see a differential of even 15F on any tip, which meets the ANSI/IPC J-STD-001 industry specification. We include the Temperature Match feature because there are some Engineers out there that want to see absolute dead-nuts temperature accuracy, so we give them the ability to do so. Waste of time in my opinion.
Do these new tips require a burn-in? If so, does the firmware have a burn-in mode? Burn-in is required (Pace's claim) to increase the life of the heater. I wonder what the life of these new heater/tip assemblies will be.
Absolutely no burn-in is required for any of our Tip-Heater Cartridges! The burn-in procedure referred to a burn-in of the
heating element not the tip itself. The way a SensaTemp heater is manufactured requires a brass bobbin to be wound with a coated heater wire - the coating burns off upon your first use of the station. The reason for the burn-in was if a customer were to get a brand new solder or desoldering iron and turn it up to max temperature, immediately, there was a minute possibility that you could immediately short out the heat wire ... so rare I never ever burned in my heaters. The initial smell of the coating was horrendous though!
The one problem that I have had with mine is when the NVRAM became corrupt. This corrupted the password and all the settings. There is no documentation on Pace's site to recover it. Happened on a weekend so I could not call anyone. I had to resort to a bit of reverse engineering to correct it. I assume from your video, they are still using the same basic technology and nothing prevents this condition from happening. Do they at least offer a way to recover it now? Perhaps just a jumper on the main PCB?
Feel free to contact us if you have any technical problems through our
www.paceworldwide.com/contact-us page and we'll try to resolve your problem. But in the meantime:
Password Removal for the ST-45 is as follows (is this what you are talking about?):
1. Power up Power Source while holding the Up/down keys.
2. Release the UP/Down keys when you observe the microprocessor
version, and display will display “EPO” (Enter password).
3. Press Up key.
4. Then Press Down key.
5. Now Press the Black Program key.
6. Press Down key again.
7. Finally Press Up key.
The password is now removed, and program will return to normal operation.
Mechanically, Tip-Heater Cartridges are as robust as the originals, maybe even more so. Generally, the method of tip failure is
- the plating gets worn, and a single pit is generated through the protective iron plating
- Since solder has a solvent effect on pure copper, the pit hollows out the inside of the tip and the plating collapses (or it just stops transferring heat)
- This solvent effect once the copper is exposed is exacerbated by higher temperatures and the use of lead-free solder alloys (they are highly corrosive to the iron plating itself, especially at higher temperatures).
Now you know why we push for the use of SetBack Tool Stands! Excessive Heat + Lead-Free Solder = Premature Tip Failure! The SetBack feature drops the temp to under solder melt, and the tips no longer oxide (a.k.a corrode) ... thus your tips last 3x longer!
Keep in mind that
man-handling a tip through rigorous use or
being heavy handed is likely to cause cracks in the plating, thus causing premature failure of the tip due to the reasons above.
While mechanical failure of the tip cartridge itself is rare, it does happen if you use pliers to remove/replace tips (a real
no-no with these types of tips - use the provided "Tip-Tool" or silicon pad) and deform the sides of the stainless steel sheath and crush/damage the ceramic heater interior. Also, I would avoid dropping the tip cartridges from the bench and then stepping on them!!
The biggest reason I would have to upgrade at home for my hobby is not the faster heating. I would like to have a better set of tweezers. Mine are huge and clumsy. I really like the ones that came out after mine. Will the new tweezers for this iron be the same basic design? When will they become available? Will the tips basically be double the price for a set?
A new AccuDrive-compatible Thermal Tweezer is being develop as we speak, but will not be available until late Fall. They are more like the MT-100 that comes with our MBT 350, but with far more fine control from 0201 components. Tips will be, ahem, expensive but less than anyone else on the market. (Disclaimer: all prices are subject to change
)
Will they offer a dual output station?
I kind of doubt it, but we'll have to wait and see. The ADS200 Stacks quite nicely you know ...
Thanks for your questions ... Hope this helps!
Aaron
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