General > General Technical Chat

Hakko FX-888 soldering station discontinued

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EEVblog:
If they wanted to go digital, they should have used an encoder knob. The buttons suck.

And I agree with RCMR, the colour scheme was really distinctive. Yeah, like everyone I gasped on first sight. But once you get a feel for the iron's quality, you instantly respect it and the colour scheme (and creative design) is a breath of fresh air.

Dave.

amyk:

--- Quote from: EEVblog on November 16, 2012, 02:37:45 am ---If they wanted to go digital, they should have used an encoder knob. The buttons suck.

--- End quote ---
I just looked at the instruction manual for the 888D and it is almost ridiculous how much functionality they managed to cram into 2 buttons (3-"letter" password option :o), so that trying to do anything other than move between the presets becomes a process not unlike bit-banging SPI manually. It's obvious they don't want you to do anything other than turn it on and use it, which is great for production environments with "strict temperature management" but not much else. The digital display is nice, but the UI sucks.


--- Quote from: Hakko ---Simple and easy operation
With only two operation buttons of UP and ENTER in the center, operation is simple and easy. Even if you’re not familiar with operation of machines, you can operate it without difficulty.
--- End quote ---
Any idiot can press buttons. Knowing how to press them is a totally different issue...

At this point I'm thinking Hakko is only riding on reputation and introducing new designs to avoid the Chinese cloners, and I truly hope this is the one Hakko station they don't clone. Adding a temperature display is good, but keep the no-nonsense easy-to-use (seriously) knob.

saturation:
Here's a link to the users manual.  If one wanted to improve the 888, what I think some useful add ons would be:

auto-off
power on light
a method to hot swap tips
lower prices, especially the EU and UK market

Now the simple process of turning the temp adjust is replaced by the instructions listed here.  Readers can judge for themselves what is gained and lost by this move.

https://doc.hakko.com/search.php?_gs=on&l=en&kc=&kp=fx888d&ki=10&ks=&ke=&kh=0&submit=Search

Sorry, couldn't add as attachment because of the forum's file size limits.

Dagon:

--- Quote ---and the strange 240V special version for China
--- End quote ---

What was different about the chinese version?

Mr Smiley:
Why don't we all get together and build our own!!!

All you need is

1 iron, under a fiver(uk) from ebay, lots of suppliers and millions of replacement tips.
24v 2A supply
pic or avr
rotary encoder
3 7-seg or lcd display
a couple of op-amps
And lots of pleasant interaction working out the software alone and with others.

Then you can add all the advantages of whatever you'd like into one single unit.

you could have an all singing, all dancing, does all that you want for under £20 in parts.


Mr Smiley  :)

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