I had the PPD120E but it's not practical to work with under microscope, so i opt to upgrade to the PPD120 which have the power supply separated from the heater.
PPD120E heat up very quickly, almost instant that may due short cables and one-unit design. I hear from seller that 120E is failing for some customers and that PPD120 is better in durability. I also had dissembled the 120E and the design don’t look very safe…
I have received my unit today, and before power on i teardown, i must see what behind that cheap Chinese designs, even more when they work with mains...
For my surprise the unit looks solid and well built. Unfortunately, I can’t see the PCB traces since I don’t have a capable screwdriver to remove the bottom screws.
The power supply makes use of the earth connection, and both psu and heater are earthed. The earth cable is crimped and soldered.
The main transformer is fixed and suspended to not touch the chassis with a good margin.
The connectors are glued to not move or disconnect.
All wire connections are isolated, less two, one they forget to put the tube before ziptie, and other looks like they apply heat and tube went away from position, but not critical. Some connections they solder the wire and then put the tube in place, with the solder temperature it shrinks the tube making it thigh just at the joint area, that can be seen on XLR like connector, that work well as tube not move, I tried to push without success.
All unit is earthed but main cable is not the right one for my country, so I take cable apart to adapt, as expected cable is not even 10A rated, looks like AWG22 to me with thick isolation, as I don’t need near 5A I will keep this cable only for this unit. Proper 16A cable is expensive and they have to cut costs for offer cheap products xD.
The fun part is the adaptor they included which I never intend to use, the adaptor is earth isolated by default, killing the purpose of earth, this adaptor is the key for put yourself in risk. The good thing is you can fix it, the adaptor has a plastic that can be removed, I don’t know why that plastic is there by default… Anyway, that adaptors are trash they make contact by touch metal which fails easy, don’t use it!
The PPD120 is slower than PPD120E, it pre heat slower, which is a good thing at my point of view.
The factory calibration was a bit off, I set it to 180ºc and it melt my 183ºc solder without problem, so I adjusted not melt at 180ºc and only start at 183ºc with a low melt.
Overall looks a solid machine, and nothing bad to say about that, but well I didn’t check the traces and how good is main isolation from the DC side. One resistor very near triac heatsink, a short can be problematic.
The only downside is the temperature profile, is not that good, it have a 10ºc range [preheat to 180ºc -> drop to 170ºc than preheat to 180ºc]
This is a limited preheater, made for iPhones, but it can work with other small stuff, also can be used to reball small BGA’s (Solder balls without hotair).
Max temperature is 300ºc.
I start to use preheater because new iphone models are easy to screw up and reflow CPU or BB. This happen to me on a 6SP tring to solder a new Wifi IC at 350ºc, and Wifi IC is far from CPU! And on a iphone 7 with Audio IC, BB_RF got reflowed and no more signal.
Now is much easier to repair without reflow critical parts. Reflow underfill chips make the balls go away from chip or joint together with other's, underfill is the culpitt. If you reflow all other chips without underfill nothing happen to the balls.
My settings are:
preheat: 175ºc
Hotair: 290ºc Lead-free OR 260ºc lead
My recomendation is reball all chips with lead solder, so when solder in place theres no way 260ºc will melt anything other that that chip.
I buy from:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/PHONEFIX-PPD120-PPD-120-Desoldering-Rework-Station-Unsolder-CPU-IC-Chip-A8-A9-A10-Remove-Welding/32845830206.html
