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It is good to know what NOT to buy.
Scary
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It is good to know what NOT to buy.
FWIW, I have a Quick 861DW hot air station that's really well made, and is similarly featured to the Hakko FR-810 at a fraction of the cost ($235.71 here).
Scary
Click here for photos of the innards (source thread).
The 957 or 957D are closer to the 858 regarding the size of enclosure, but it's pump is internal, not in the handle (pricing). -
Looks really good.It is good to know what NOT to buy.
FWIW, I have a Quick 861DW hot air station that's really well made, and is similarly featured to the Hakko FR-810 at a fraction of the cost ($235.71 here).
Scary
Click here for photos of the innards (source thread).
The 957 or 957D are closer to the 858 regarding the size of enclosure, but it's pump is internal, not in the handle (pricing).
Some of this stuff that comes out of China scares the crap out of me. -
Looks like chepoo $18 version that is selling all over china does not have this stupid interconnect board waiting to kill you. HV wires go stright to the heater:
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If you think that little PCB is the biggest problem these units have..
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I did not say it's the biggest, but it's nice to be sure mains won't short to the ground in your hand.
Guns for this station sell in china for $6, and I plan to build double PID controlled station myself. -
Its a fixed temperature version, a simple 'hair dryer'.
Looks like chepoo $18 version that is selling all over china does not have this stupid interconnect board waiting to kill you. HV wires go stright to the heater:
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Some of this crap that is for sale; scares the living crap out of me.
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I received my "WEP 858D" today from eBay. Fully expecting it to be ghetto wired. But for $40... with a guarantee. Can you go wrong?
First thing I did was turn it on to test it. The digital display has multiple burned out/dead segments.
I opened it up. The power input cable has three wires - brown, blue, and green. Brown is supposed to be hot, and blue is supposed to be neutral, but when I continuity tested them back to the plug, the blue wire is hot and the brown wire is neutral! Still, the fuse is on the neutral line.
The ground wire from the handheld unit was grounded to the circuit board via a 24awg wire, but the board isn't grounded to anything. So a few things are wrong so far lol. Haven't taken the handheld unit apart. -
Picked up a Sigma R700 hot air rework station yesterday, straight from Amazon. Came with three tips and a spare heater element, that I wasn't expecting.
Looks just like the rest of the 858 stations. So, having found this thread the first thing I did before opening it up for further checks was grab the ohm meter and see if I was going to wake myself up by touching the wrong spots later. Everything was good so far. Powered it up and everything appeared to me to be working as expected.
I shut it down and cracked it open. I found the fuse on the neutral side of the 120V and the board isn't grounded. Nice. But, for $65CAD it's a whole lot cheaper than that Hakko that my heart wanted. But the wallet liked the idea of this one much more LOL. I changed the wiring around and fired it up to re-shrink the connections I'd modified. Put it all back together and it's all good now.
So long as you know what this thing is for, and you know about these are the potential issues going in to the purchase, you already know how to fix it. It's a pretty quick fix. -
I received my "WEP 858D" today from eBay. Fully expecting it to be ghetto wired. But for $40... with a guarantee. Can you go wrong?
First thing I did was turn it on to test it. The digital display has multiple burned out/dead segments.
Have you asked for a return/refund? That's quite bad, even for the price...
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I don't know why people continue to bash Made in China stuff. Just look around you, almost everything's made in China these days. Even my $1500 Apple MacBook Pro is assembled in China, and I've had absolutely no problems with it. You pay for what you get regardless of where an item's made. Someone mentioned preferring to have a German-made Weller WHA900. Well, I would too. Except the WHA900 costs $650 vs. $70 for this thing. I'm sure if the China version sold for a few hundred dollars instead of $70, it would be higher quality.
I'm thankful the original poster of this thread alerted me to this potential problem. I'm still going to buy this unit because I can't afford the much more expensive alternatives. However, I don't intend to turn the unit on without first checking the wiring. -
The Hakko FR-801 with all the nozzles cost $650 when I bought it, but it never tried to kill me, so I'm fine with it.
I always figured, I am using this tool to make money. Might as well buy something decent.
At Avatar Studios they had this cheap piece of shit generic desoldering tool. Everyone ripped small pads on switches for the SSL J9000 using that POS. Ricky would show up with a Hakko 808 and the switches just came off... it actually sucked up the solder. And left the pad on the board.
His thing was almost $300 vs. the cheap POS on the table, but he did in 45 minutes what took me eight hours, and no ripped pads. From then on, I was totally ok with spending more on soldering equipment, because 45 minutes with $650 tool beats 8 hours with the POS.
I tried an 858D once to remove a 28 pin heatsinked QFN from a ten layer PCB. Five minutes in, it didn't come off. I tossed it in the ewaste bin. I can now feel better about that decision after reading that Atten is now trying to kill people with these things.
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I don't know why people continue to bash Made in China stuff. Just look around you, almost everything's made in China these days. Even my $1500 Apple MacBook Pro is assembled in China, and I've had absolutely no problems with it. You pay for what you get regardless of where an item's made. Someone mentioned preferring to have a German-made Weller WHA900. Well, I would too. Except the WHA900 costs $650 vs. $70 for this thing. I'm sure if the China version sold for a few hundred dollars instead of $70, it would be higher quality.
It's certainly true that most anything electronic is made in China. But depending on the brand, it may have been designed elsewhere, and only manufactured in China with a proper QC system in place to catch any defective units prior to them ending up in customers hands. For products that are fully originated in China (design to packaging), there tends to be a lot more compromises to squeeze out every cent possible. So corners that shouldn't be cut happen anyway, which is why we see things such as poor performance, bad user interfaces, dangerous electrical faults, and a much higher defect rate.
This isn't to say a Chinese company can't do a far better job, but as you suspect, it increases the price tag.
Personally, frequency of use played a huge role in my decision making process. As I use my irons most of all, I ended up buying a Weller setup (WD1 + WSP80 iron + WMP iron + WDH20 stand + WDH20T switched stand). It was expensive, but the irons work well and the handles don't get hot, even after hours of use. The ergonomics are also important for something frequently used, and the Weller holds it's own here as well (as do other top tier soldering equipment manufacturers). It also offered cheap tips (plated copper), which was important to me as most cartridge tips were selling for ~$30 per at the time (FX-951 wasn't out yet).
Since I don't use hot air as frequently and I had no intention of buying a Hakko FR-810 or better (no way I was paying $700+), I went with a Quick 861DW (paid ~$225 shipped; they go for $235 now). It's a Chinese brand, but it's built a lot better than any other Chinese brand I've ever seen internally (in person or photos). But unlike most of it's home-grown competition, the wiring is safe, the UI is actually very nice (intuitive), has a decent feature set, and it's performance is what I expect from a 1kW station. FWIW, there are those that use it professionally and haven't had any issues @ 40+ hrs./wk. usage (861DS = EU version, 861DA = UK version). It even uses quick-change nozzles (friction fit, no screw clamp to mess with).
For a hot air preheater, I went cheap and bought a Tenma 21-10135 from MCM Electronics. FWIW, Tenma is a brand name owned by Farnell, who also owns MCM and Newark/Element14 (as well as CPC in the UK and all of the Farnell sites). And as expected, I got what I paid for; every corner they could cut, was. Amazingly, the wiring was correct. Internally however, it's a total rat's nest inside, and the heating element assy. isn't even square (tubing is welded together, and there's nothing close to a right angle where required). It leaned so bad out of the box, I had to stack 3 washers to shim one side to get it even close to straight. The tilt can't be fixed, but my shimming at least got it to where it's useable. But as it's rarely used, it's sufficient for my purposes.
Please note, I use my equipment as a hobbyist, not a professional. If that ever changes, some of it will be replaced with gear that can handle that kind of duty (namely the preheater, as the 861DW is capable of professional use IME). For desoldering, I just do it manually with good quality supplies. -
There's a lot of good stuff made in China. It drives me nuts a little when people refer to EVERYTHING there as "cheap rubbish."
It's like analog vs. digital in audio. That used to drive me batshit insane.
Let's compare a $100,000 console plugged into a $150,000 tape machine using $50,000 of outboard gear
to a $800 presonus using pirated cracked plugins...
and then conclude that omg, ANALOG IS BETTER!!!!!1111
Or a 3rd gen ipod powering 16 ohm headphones to a $2000 turntable.
Used to drive me nuts. -
Sorry for digging it up,
but I looking into this and was just wondering, which MCU does the WEP 858D+ have?
Which Model has the Atmel Chips to mod?
thanks -
Sorry for digging it up,
but I looking into this and was just wondering, which MCU does the WEP 858D+ have?
Which Model has the Atmel Chips to mod?
thanks
I just asked this from seller on ebay ( http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/220V-WEP858D-SMD-SMT-SOLDERING-REWORK-STATION-welder-HOT-AIR-858D-Sale-/151993774809?hash=item236388f2d9:g:DbQAAOSwGotWjcCH )
He told me:
"Dear customer,
Thank you so much for your interest on our prosuct!
The picture is attached.
And the type of the processor is samsung.
Have a nice day!"
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I just asked this from seller on ebay ( http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/220V-WEP858D-SMD-SMT-SOLDERING-REWORK-STATION-welder-HOT-AIR-858D-Sale-/151993774809?hash=item236388f2d9:g:DbQAAOSwGotWjcCH )
He told me:
"Dear customer,
Thank you so much for your interest on our prosuct!
The picture is attached.
And the type of the processor is samsung.
Have a nice day!"
Hi, I bought one (W.E.P 858D+) last week from ebay and it didn't worked. So, this is how it looks inside:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwd4w5PTVA3yRGJRWnN4eUV0OTQ
The board is not connected to protective wire, the clamp should be on the other side of board. But then you won't have connection with front pannel.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwd4w5PTVA3yZzQyb3RRX3RSd28
Cracked capacitor leg, not a big deal
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwd4w5PTVA3yNkRNbkh3SVBuZk0
Collector shorted with base, blows the LED of MOC3041 that controls heating
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwd4w5PTVA3yYWhSQS1KZXZKSFE
Damaged isolation of wire that power heating. 230V, the resistance is 76R. The wires (white, gray) are really thin, diameter is cca 1.2mm including isolation.
Ouu .. I forgot to mention: the main switch connects neutral. Phase is always present on the board when station is plugged. -
Hi everyone!
I see that the 858d+ model is of bad quality and dangerous, but how about the 998D? (Here is the link: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Fast-Local-Shipping-2015-New-220V-998D-Hot-Air-Rework-Soldering-Iron-Station-Welder-Hot-Air/32413294186.html) Has anyone used it?
Thanks in advance. -
Hot Air Rework Stations direct from China should be as parts only. same goes for most things aliexpress, with an AC wall plug.
why do people think its the same as made to order complying to the rules brand name products?
if you buy a car sold as parts only from japan your motor mechanic or motor trader. same here parts only. -
The simplest thing to try for any hot air reworkstation is a calibration procedure, to determine how the output setting is set and if its correct. Now, how the hot air output from the nozzle translates to heating any item is another story as it depends on the mass needed to heat, if the item has been preheated and ambient temperature of the lab.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/deadly-wiring-fault-atten-858d-hot-air-rework-station/msg54588/#msg54588
Enjoy.
comparatively, i did not take 1-2 minutes to melt solder, i think the heating speed feels about the same as what i saw before. then i got curious about the temperature, and here is what i discovered the wide margin of error between temp setting and actual output. when i first tried at a dial of 200, flow = minimum, the temperature imparted to the PCB after about 30s is way way way way way over 210C. in fact, to hit 210C in about 30s, all i need to dial in is about 165 (see pic).
with a wallwatt device, at 165 setting. the station draws periodic cycles of 100-260w of power draw. i hope the above temperature points are helpful hints to users. -
Quote
The simplest thing to try for any hot air reworkstation is a calibration procedure,
and Quote from: 3roomlab on Yesterday at 08:54:42 PM
to determine how the output setting is set and if its correct. Now, how the hot air output from the nozzle translates to heating any item is another story as it depends on the mass needed to heat, if the item has been preheated and ambient temperature of the lab.Quotecomparatively, i did not take 1-2 minutes to melt solder, i think the heating speed feels about the same as what i saw before. then i got curious about the temperature, and here is what i discovered the wide margin of error between temp setting and actual output. when i first tried at a dial of 200, flow = minimum, the temperature imparted to the PCB after about 30s is way way way way way over 210C. in fact, to hit 210C in about 30s, all i need to dial in is about 165 (see pic).
with a wallwatt device, at 165 setting. the station draws periodic cycles of 100-260w of power draw. i hope the above temperature points are helpful hints to users.
something for a diy weekender all you need is the chinese head unit like this one. the rest of the unit can be made in the lab . ie arduino temp and fun control in a case. the had part is calibration of the temperature for accuracy. standby run commands .
looking at the data shows the chinese 220V ceramic heating element can push a top of 500c so that 24v fan must keep the air flow high as needed.so maybe fun with arduino programming the heating map. only time will tell if this will work. note- how light the wires are. needs better cable & more air holes in the handle grip. also note- the reed switch and magnet used as head unit sits in a cradle mounted on the side of the case . the magnet in the cradle trips the reed switch B inside the head unit case. for standby or low setting. I will post when i start work on it. find a 700w step down transformer & re-wire the output 40V? need to test it . then map out a schematic, then make art work of the case, and all the parts inside it. by mid 2017 I hope.
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Is there any way that these (potentially wrongly wired) units could damage the 240v UK mains socket ring cabling ? I'd like to get one myself but would like to know that it couldn't damage any existing equipment.
Thanks
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I purchased one of the WEP units. Inspection showed the fuse on the neutral and a couple of questionable solder joints on the ground wiring. I have rewired the fuse, re-soldered, scrapped paint here and there, improved the case grounding, and tided up the wiring mess. After all the "tuning" it seems to be in good working condition and I fell better safety wise. I will be using it one of these days.
EDIT: I am ordering a new power switch from Mouser to replace the existing one.
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I just got a WEP unit in the mail today. Same situation. Before I even plugged it in I rewired the fuse, removed small solder blobs, separated a solder bridge, scraped paint, checked grounds. All good now. Works like a charm.