Could you make a female to male extension instead of replacing the cable?
I didn't find any extension cables in a quick search, though.
We use the ST50/TD100 irons all day every day for repair work. The current set of tips we've been using were ordered over a year ago and are used for about 1-2 hrs total each day, and they are still fine.
I've just ordered two new ADS200 irons because they cost about the same as a second hand ST50/TD100, so I'm looking forward to trying out the new kit. It does seem that Pace discontinue stuff pretty quickly though.
Edit: Reading the last page of this thread indicates that this station is/was sold by Farnell. I've bought most of my Pace gear in the past from Farnell however they only list the ADS200 tips with no mention of the soldering station. Have Farnell stopped selling Pace gear?
I ordered mine from exmel.co.uk who have been extremely helpful and quick to deal with.
We use the ST50/TD100 irons all day every day for repair work. The current set of tips we've been using were ordered over a year ago and are used for about 1-2 hrs total each day, and they are still fine.
I've just ordered two new ADS200 irons because they cost about the same as a second hand ST50/TD100, so I'm looking forward to trying out the new kit. It does seem that Pace discontinue stuff pretty quickly though.
Edit: Reading the last page of this thread indicates that this station is/was sold by Farnell. I've bought most of my Pace gear in the past from Farnell however they only list the ADS200 tips with no mention of the soldering station. Have Farnell stopped selling Pace gear?
I ordered mine from exmel.co.uk who have been extremely helpful and quick to deal with.
Comes right up for me: https://uk.farnell.com/pace/8007-0581/soldering-station-with-isb-tool/dp/2893441?st=ads200
Hard to make one size suit everyone, for people who keep the stand closer to the station they will end up with too much cable. Could you make a female to male extension instead of replacing the cable?
Hard to make one size suit everyone, for people who keep the stand closer to the station they will end up with too much cable. Could you make a female to male extension instead of replacing the cable?
Of course. But I don't have source for nice heat resistant soft cable, and two heavy connectors on a cable (male/female) make cable hang wrong and noncompliant.
Obviously with the large display I couldn’t reuse the OEM front panel, so I laser cut a new one. I then heated it and bent it to make it fit the chassis. It’s not a perfect fit, but with the metal trim piece you can’t see that.
I thought I’d finally post an update since people have been pm’ing me if I added an LCD to the ADS200 or not. Well yes, I ended up making a replacement control board with an LCD. Of course it took forever since I had to stop all projects for 6+ months to deal with the real world. Images of the final assembly, actual board and Kicad models are attached.
What is different about the original control board which makes calibration unnecessary?
Obviously with the large display I couldn’t reuse the OEM front panel, so I laser cut a new one. I then heated it and bent it to make it fit the chassis. It’s not a perfect fit, but with the metal trim piece you can’t see that.
Congrats on the mod, lots of work. As you can see from the edited image I did, a couple of tweaks and it would look very tidy, but yeah white on black display for sure with that matte black and grey bezel.
If you ever do a redesign, I think the layout would fit on a single side so perhaps leave it all on the rear side and then add some mounting holes to front mount display, controls and socket on an otherwise unpopulated front side. That way you can add a clear screen protector and be less dependent on component placement for the display fit.
I thought I’d finally post an update since people have been pm’ing me if I added an LCD to the ADS200 or not. Well yes, I ended up making a replacement control board with an LCD. Of course it took forever since I had to stop all projects for 6+ months to deal with the real world. Images of the final assembly, actual board and Kicad models are attached.
Nice work on your project. Did you do any sort of testing to compare the time it takes to reach temperature, load pickup (Add some thermal load an see how the control loops compare). No doubt you have a lot of bells and whistles, but I wonder performance wise, how it compares.
Well this is leagues ahead of my half assed attempt! Kudos. Any plans to make it a kit
I thought I’d finally post an update since people have been pm’ing me if I added an LCD to the ADS200 or not. Well yes, I ended up making a replacement control board with an LCD. Of course it took forever since I had to stop all projects for 6+ months to deal with the real world. Images of the final assembly, actual board and Kicad models are attached.
Nice work on your project. Did you do any sort of testing to compare the time it takes to reach temperature, load pickup (Add some thermal load an see how the control loops compare). No doubt you have a lot of bells and whistles, but I wonder performance wise, how it compares.
Yes, I definitely compared how they worked in real world tests. 20C (room temp) to 300C is 4 seconds. I set the standby temp to 150C, so it's ~2s to heat up to 300C taking it out of the stand. For thermal loads it performs the same as OEM, and my findings agree quite well with what Dave showed in his review. The thermocouple doesn't measure any significant temperature drop when trying to solder a large ground plane (converse to the JBC), so you just have to use a higher temperature like Dave. I know some people didn't like that when the review came out, but it doesn't bother me. It was just interesting to see that with the live temperature readout and power meter.Well this is leagues ahead of my half assed attempt! Kudos. Any plans to make it a kit
What did you attempt to do?
I'm not planning on a kit as of now. If I can clean up the aesthetics in version 2, then I would be open to the idea.
Take an M5Stack esp32 and bodge it in as an LCD + wifi + bt controller in place of the ancient MCU.
I think it looks pretty good as is frankly. You should sell it to PACE so they can jettison their shoddy excuse for a UI!
Are you talking about calibrations for the different tips? I did calibrate the 3 tips I have, but I found them all to be close enough to each other to not bother trying to have individual calibrations. This is where Pace will definitely outshine mine since they know all the details about the tips. Perhaps they use the 18-bit ADC to figure out what tip it is so they can control it more accurately
Are you talking about calibrations for the different tips? I did calibrate the 3 tips I have, but I found them all to be close enough to each other to not bother trying to have individual calibrations. This is where Pace will definitely outshine mine since they know all the details about the tips. Perhaps they use the 18-bit ADC to figure out what tip it is so they can control it more accurately
Yes I was wondering why the ADS200 tips don't need calibration. Interesting project. You confirmed that their control loop circuit probably works about as good as it can.
I guess the issue with soldering large ground planes likely has to do with tip design?