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Hello there, I am an electronic newbie from Slovakia, that is searching for the cheapest possible, not explosive soldering station. I read many forums stating that 2in1 is bad, Chinese products mostly go brrrr, and also that old Hakko is reliable. Everything would be fine, but I don't have the budget for a Hakko nor anything relatable. I'm talking about spending 60€ and less on both iron and hot air station. I want to start repairing electronics at home, just a hobby, maybe fix a laptop here or there, get some money out of it eventually... I like repairing stuff, doesn't matter what. It isn't supposed to be professional use. I also wanted to try and snag a "broken" laptop (or more
) off of eBay, since there's a lot for good prices at german ebay. So I would like to ask you guys a few questions.... Do you have experience with the jcd 8898 from banggood? Have you ever tried fixing broken electronics from ebay or any other site? Since I live in a country where not many ppl throw away pricey things, sometimes a few solid ones appear at the dumpster, not much, I can't really do that. Or do you recommend a better 2in1 station? Doesn't have to even be 2in1 just two pieces of equipment in the budget, that won't die after a few months. I am open to any kind of modding tutorials, to make my equipment safer.
Thanks in advance, link to the station below. Any answer appreciated !
Edit: If this is in the wrong cathegory please notify me, and if anyone also knew a good way to get a lab bench power supply, would be amazing!
(https://www.banggood.com/JCD-8898-2-in-1-750W-Soldering-Station-Hot-Air-Gun-Heater-LCD-Digital-Display-Soldering-Iron-Welding-Rework-Station-for-Cell-phone-BGA-SMD-PCB-IC-Repair-p-1721250.html?cur_warehouse=CN&ID=523699&rmmds=search)
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With all the competition in the Chinese house warmers (fire hazards) you often get exactly what you pay for. If that's all that a budget permits, I would try to push just a tiny bit higher, even a small increase in cost is often a vast increase in relative quality. Try to find teardowns so you can see what's inside. The somewhat better ones will often already show you what's inside because they're willing to show least some effort in a product design.
Never buy the cheapest one, go for the second cheapest one, at least. Quite often they'll even eliminate the safety fuse, then hot glue the power connector into the case to save a few pennies. Look for screws .. using screws, and installing them cost money.
Be aware, that if you remove the cable for that hot air wand, there is often live mains voltage at one of the exposed pins inside the socket that operates the heater element.. and don't damage the cable or accidentally touch the exposed metal hot end. it can also become mains voltage upon contact with the heater inside, after a bit of wear and tear to the thin heat shielding inside. .. You can potentially get both burned and electrocuted at the same time just from dropping the tool a few times.. or let it come in contact with a properly grounded case, such as a of an nearby power supply or computer. the resulting short to ground will likely destroy more than the tool.
I found the T12 Digital Stations are pretty good, such as KSGER or even the Quicko, something with replaceable tips. That SMD rework station I would buy separate. Those low cost 2 in one stations are compact, but the extra cables are often in the way when not used, and more likely to loose function of both tools when one fails. -
Thank you for a response, i guess ill still go for it and try to modify it myself. If you dont mind spending a bit i can post a link to some teardowns, im not good at judging things just by looking... i am really just a guy whos trying to start somewhere, but i cant really spend that much. I know, i know, the more i spend, the better mostly, but the less ill spend, the more I will have for something else. So i will give it a try and i will do a teardown MYSELF, maybe you guys will learn something and help me and more people. Thank you
It performs decently well, in terms of desoldering, soo i guess ill give it a try, there was a video of someone actually measuring if the iron tip and heat gun metal body are grounded, and they actually were. Can't find it now.
The links:
() - a small teardown in indonese? idk
() - another teardown, in english
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Clip connectors on the power supply, heat-shrink tube over the wires at the switches. Surge protection on the power supply, Protection Fuse in the IEC connector. Its actually not terrible, minor details give away that it was built down to a price, but still some effort at being somewhat better than its competition. If that one fits your budget, I'm alright with recommending that choice as a good starting tool.
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I would not buy a 2-in-1 and instead buy a T12 clone as mentioned above, and an 858 hot air station. But I doubt you will beat the price of that thing you linked.
This is the correct section of the forum BTW: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/ -
Thank you very much, i will definetly do a review/teardown as soon asi get this boi home. I hope everyone will be able to learn something, or at least laugh xdd, if you know what i mean.
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One thing I think deserves mentioning about the JCD 8898, is that the soldering iron part doesn't have any temperature sensing at the tip/at all. (3 wires going into the connector, GROUND, and heater phase/neutral) The temperature indicated on the screen is an extrapolated temperature, and more an energy reading, as the device is not controlling temperature but just doing phase angle control through a triac and modulating the energy to the tip. I have used the station for a while now, and as far as tip temps go, usually you set it at 375C and never again change the knob. But just a heads up for somebody who might want actual 'calibrated' temperatures at the tip!
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FWIW, a number of soldering stations perform temperature feedback by measuring the resistance of the heating element between heating pulses. Others have a thermocouple in series with the heating element. So the lack of a separate thermocouple pin in no way proves the lack of temperature control. 2 or 3 pins are extremely common in high end soldering station cartridges (JBC, Pace, Weller, Hakko, etc.) since 2 pins can still do the job (one pin is ground, the other is the heating element, with or without series thermocouple).
Of course, one can use as many pins as one likes and still not do temperature sensing. The number of pins simply doesn’t tell you either way. -
Apologies for this necro post (I only bought mine a week ago from Banggood - primarily for the hot air reworking feature). I'm adding my own observations here to alert anyone reading this topic as a result of a google or DDG search, to the presence of mains voltage on the pins in the "male" panel sockets on the base unit.
I'd opened the control unit up to do a safety inspection and everything seemed to be ok. It was only when I tested the contact connections in the female plug to check the ESD earth continuity and the resistance of the iron's heater element that it occurred to me to check the level of the voltage being sent to the pins.
It was the fact that the cold resistance was not the expected 8 to 10 ohms that I'm used to seeing with properly designed soldering stations but 133 ohms which would require 100v rms or more to generate the typical 70 watts or so of heating power. Testing with a DMM revealed the presence of the full 240vac of my mains supply voltage with the iron unplugged.
Since this cheap soldering iron/hot air soldering station lacks any form of documentation to advise against plugging and unplugging the iron and hot air wand whilst it is switched on and the need to fit the rubber "dust covers" to any vacant female panel socket (typically the iron for those who bought it as a cheap hot air soldering reworking station - the iron is pretty naff). I thought, unlike the countless youtube reviewers, that this glaring electrocution hazard should be highlighted to warn anyone who mat not have realised the true significance of the rather fanciful lightning symbol embossed on those attached rubber "dust caps" which appear to have been attached as an "afterthought" to mitigate against the use of a male connector carrying full mains voltage contrary to common safety practice.
This use of a male panel connector isn't a safety issue with low voltage irons using a mains isolated 20 to 30 vdc supply to power an 8 ohm heating element but when it comes to mains voltage power, it's a definite no no. Ideally, the gender of the connectors should have been reversed in this case rather than apply a sticking plaster solution of a black protective rubber dustcap embossed with a lightning flash providing the only hint of the potential hazard of an empty socket.
For those curious about how the iron is temperature regulated, this seems to rely on the heating element having a pronounced positive temperature coefficient (133 ohms at 24*C versus around 500 ohms at 500*C. Standard heating element wire has a very small tempco from cold to bright red heat temperature (around a 10% increase from 25 to 600 *C). There was definitely no indication that a thermo-couple had been incorporated into the heater circuit (less than 0.1mV after setting it to 500*C and swiftly unplugging it to test for the presence of any Seebeck voltage effect.
The temperature control does work surprisingly well considering the change of resistance measurement method used to sense this. However, the iron does take a couple of minutes from cold to stabilise within +/-5*C of a steady tip temperature.
In my case (and that of most reviewers) this was some 20 to 30 *C above the set point. Since it allows the end user to calibrate this offset out (undocumented, of course!), this isn't a huge problem but it's the very sluggish response that will prove the most irritating shortcoming to many, if not all users.
Although I'm rather tempted to throw the iron into the trash and disconnect its front panel socket to render it a little less hazardous, I've decided simply to set it aside for use as an emergency 'backup' and to provide additional heating when dealing with large thermal mass joints and to make sure to keep the 'dust cap' in place at all times and avoid switching on the soldering section.
The hot air wand socket suffers the same hazard but since there's normally no need to unplug this from the controller, the electrocution risk remains acceptably small (at least as far as competent adult usage is concerned). The temperature control on the hot air appears to function ok as far as I can tell.
I checked this with a Metrawatt analogue wattmeter on my 240v mains and it limits demand to a maximum of 700W during its initial warm up before dropping down to stabilise the temperature. At a setting 350 *C and maximum fan speed with the largest nozzle it averaged around 220W, dropping to 180W with the medium nozzle and 120W with the small nozzle, confirming that some form of temperature control is being used.
The cool down process takes about a minute with the largest nozzle, taking some three minutes or so with the smallest before dropping to the 100 *C mark that starts the over run timer that triggers the delayed power down. If you have suitable silicone oven mitts (I use two - one inside the other), it is possible to safely swap out nozzles (but it does require a bit of careful wriggling to separate them from the business end of the gun). If you don't have such heat protective handwear, you'll have to allow another ten minutes of cool down time or else use a pair of long nose pliars if you really can't wait (not a recommended solution since it risks damaging the nozzle).
I haven't tested the hot air wand with actual reworking tasks yet so can't offer any personal opinion on this aspect of its performance. Using hot air to reflow solder smd components is more of an art than an exact science anyway so I won't be able to offer any opinion until I've acquired the requisite experience.
However, since I know the wattage and the effect of what seem to be a common range of nozzle sizes, I expect it will prove to be equally effective as any similarly rated hot air soldering wand anyway. I've got plenty of scrapped boards in my collection of salvage to practice on so it's just a matter time before I can safely risk reworking kit I care about.
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hi.
i just got my JCD 8898 and it works only had a 6 bucks
im wondering if you can get another soldering iron that use t12.
if not this will work until it breaks.
oh i had a soldering iron from lidhl (parkside) and it broke after 2 months and i didn't find the resit -
For just 6 bucks, I'd have to say you got yourself a real bargain.
As for the T12 question, I'd recommend the KSGER T12 soldering station but with some reservations over some electrical safety issues which should really be addressed before you start using it long term. A few eevblog members (including myself) have posted their fixes to KSGER related topic threads and there were several youtube review/teardown videos around the time I bought mine about 3 years ago.
If you DDG or google "KSGER T12" you should get plenty of hits on the YT reviews and EEVBlog topics You might even manage to track down my own EEVBlog contribution which has eluded my own searches so far.
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I have a differently branded but identical looking hot air station. It seems useless for anything but heatshrink. Maybe i'm just using it wrong but it's pretty miserable, and made a lot of smoke the first time I used it...
As for JCD soldering irons, I have two of their "80W" ones that look like a plug-in hakko 888 handle with a little digital display. I got one just for a travel work bag in case I forgot an iron and had nothing else to use. It ended up being less bad than I expected so I got a second. Both were like 8 bucks shipped. The power cord is too short and it's no TS100 but it's good for the price. -
Be aware, that if you remove the cable for that hot air wand, there is often live mains voltage at one of the exposed pins inside the socket that operates the heater element..
Yes, just learned that the hard way.
What I didn't expect is that there is even 220V on one of the pins when the switch is "off".