Advice on recovering from a soldering station miss choice :palm:

[Arcturus]

Turns out that I was missing something in my switch diagram. Only pins 3 & 4 can be ganged. Pins 1, 2, 5, & 6 each need to be switched independently, so I decided to use a 4PDT toggle switch. The revised diagram is attached. I also chose to make a switching cable instead of modifying the innards of the station. The toggle switch is fastened to a bracket fabricated from 1" wide stainless steel strip and mounted to the station with VHB tape.

[techboy]

Thank you very much for sharing this. I have a 10-pin Aviator plugs left from another project and was hoping to use them by fitting them inside.
I got a 6P2T switch to switch between the irons.

For some reason, I keep burning the main board  . Seagon were good to send me 2 replacement boards, and I blew both of them. This STC micro is very sensitive to any wrong wiring of the iron. I think the thermocouple pin is connected straight to the pin of the micro and, if not wired correctly, sends 24V straight to it?
I have dead short between the 5V and GND of the Micro pins. When unsoldered the Micro the short is gone. Same on all 3 boards 

I think I blew it the first and second times because I did not consider the mirrored pinout between the male and female plugs.

The third time was my last board. I had it working with one side C245 iron through the connection diagram below without connecting the UP/DOWN buttons. The minute I soldered the up/down buttons' yellow and white cables, it beeped like having a cardiac arrest and died on me.

I am completely lost as to what I am wiring wrong. Here is the wiring diagram I got. Can anybody spot an issue with it?


Also, I can't understand why the V+ and V- change polarities between C210 and C245 cartridges? Is that a typo?


Maybe I am that unlucky and should just get Hiroshi plugs and a 4PDT switch and do the extensions outside like you did to avoid any internal foul play.

[Arcturus]

Your slide switch wiring doesn't look quite right. Some of the terminals probably aren't what you think they are. In other words, I believe you're pivoting off the wrong terminals. If you look at the data sheet for the switch, there’s a schematic that shows which pins are common pivot points (black dots). Caution. I haven’t validated my wiring diagram yet though. I’ll open up my station and take a look. you’ve smoked enough boards already.

[techboy]

Yes, I did, and understandably i cannot buy more replacements. Trying to convince the guys to send me the firmware, but it's a lost hope as the Chinese are very protective of their code.
These micros seem like prevention to extract a dump, and I'm stuck at this stage. Sunegon offered to send it back for a repair, I might opt in for that option, but that means no more modifications.

I thought I read the pinouts correctly though? Isn't this the path? When I measure the position that type of reading I am getting

[Arcturus]

Your drawing reveals some issues. Check your Hirose pin connections again. I think you'll find that they aren't wired to the pin numbers you think they are. Get a magnifying glass and a good light to examine closely the pin numbers that are physically marked onto the plastic housing of the connector (yes, there are actual little numbers embossed near each pin). Both male and female connectors have matching pin numbers, so pin 1 on the male mates with pin 1 on the female. I can't stress this enough: THE PIN NUMBER MARKS WILL GUIDE YOU TO SUCCESS.

No matter which connector it is, male or female, they both follow this numbering scheme:
Pin 1: Ground/Earth (green)
Pin 2: Vout (red)
Pin 3: Down (white)
Pin 4: Up (yellow)
Pin 5: Vout (blue)

I'm assuming your drawing for the Hirose male connector is from the solder side. If so, then you've got Earth (green) on the wrong pin. Again, check that the green wire is soldered to the pin marked "1". If you soldered it to pin 5, that's wrong. You also have the pin for the UP button soldered to a Vout pin! Maybe that explains why you released the magic smoke. You turned UP/Down into self-destruct buttons. Go carefully pin by pin and verify that you soldered each wire to the correct pin number. Don't guess/assume at the pin number. Use your magnifier/microscope to confirm the pin marking.

BTW, is that a GX16 10-pin connector you're using for the extension?

[vulkan35]

For some reason, I keep burning the main board  . Seagon were good to send me 2 replacement boards, and I blew both of them.

 

[techboy]

Thanks @Arcturus for putting up with me.

Yes all connectors on the drawing are from the soldering side. Following your extension switch hookup diagram now I can see that I have wired them wrongly

iron red to 5
iron green to 2
iron blue to 1

Yes, these are GX-16 connectors I had left over from the unisolder project. I should have just bought the Hiroshi ones.
Seems like the switch hookup is fine, only the cross-wired iron on the GX16 was a mess

I will have to go radio silent for two months until the boards get repaired. Nothing much I can test without them, I assume.

Appreciate all your help, mate, will follow your latest diagram once I have the boards, hopefully, repaired.

[techboy]

Thanks for all your help @arcturus

I have managed to get both 210 and 245 irons and tips working.

The only issue I am experiencing is that when I wire up 115 iron based on the pin configuration which comes on the Hiroshi socket I get the iron tip turning red hot. I think I damaged already 3 x C115 tips I got with the Aifen 115 iron.
I tested these tips with the iron when I first got it, I am sure it was working fine, I must have wired something wrong. But I followed the Hiroshi plug configuration on sockets which now works on 210 and 245.

Can you confirm if this configuration works with your C115 tips? I have tried also to disconnect bridged 5 to 6 pins.
I checked each iron I have and traced the socket which leads inside and this is colours and orientations
Seems like your 115 iron cables are slightly different than my 2 x 115 irons here (one original JBC and another Aifens one) Can you confirm how did you wire up 115 iron?





Internal schematic end up like this

[techboy]

Hooray, managed to get all working finally. Thank you @arcturus for the pointers.

Here is my setup

[techboy]

I absolutely Agree with you.

The Aifen right now does all I need and I have my tweezers which work great. But, I must admit Chinese iron holders and tips are absolute rubbish. They burn for no reason even under 300*c at times. The jbc tips I have with Chinese iron holder is much more reliable.

I would spend in a blink $5K for the JBC system, but return in investment is so long that I cant justify it right now. Either I need to opt in for a single iron option or go this track. Down the track when people queue outside for macbook board repairs  it will be the way ill go.

So far very happy with the Aifen and slowly will get JBC tips as each are about $80 now, while Chinese at $25.

[MR]

I used the JBC C105 tools for a longer time, but they're EOL and the tips are overpriced (45 EUR one tip now, a tweezer requiring 2 tips makes it 90 EUR... surely JBC just lost a customer due to that pricing and EOL'ing the C105, they are already expensive but finally doubling that is too much). 25 EUR was my maximum for tips and I used to buy like 10 a time back then, buying started to go down when I figured out the trick with the heat gun.

In order to increase the life time (drastically) of the c105 tips I used to support it with a hot air gun, I think I set the heat-gun to 300°C adding the tweezers will get the components off in no time and increase the lifetime of the tip 10-fold at least. You can get the components off within seconds.

[techboy]

I would advise check out preheaters. I was sceptical, bit heating the hole board to 150*C and even tweezers pulls those filtering caps with an ease.

Heat gun, on one hand and soldering on another under microscope its already cramped for me.

They ha e this low profile preheaters which work awesomely. Only annoyance is that I need to coole the board each time before it goes under IR camera to keep looking for that short.