Auto feeding soldering station - JBC-ALE-210VA

[OwenH]

Hi,

I'm looking into a JBC-ALE-210VA auto feeding soldering station but have no direct experience with these.  Do auto feeding soldering stations work equally well for pcb soldering and soldering wires in a solder cup? I have a bunch of solder cup wire soldering coming up and would love to have a free hand to hold the wire wile soldering.  Are there any other makes/models I should look at?

Thanks,
Owen

[thm_w]

Review of earlier unit here, which appears to have a similar mechanism, basically not good for small gauge, OK for thick solder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNLXSFTBorg

What is "solder cup wire soldering", you mean tinning the ends of leads? Why not just use a solder cup for that.
They have a 30 day trial you can do as well.

Hakko equivalent: https://www.tequipment.net/Hakko373-11.html

[tomgat]

Hi,

I'm looking into a JBC-ALE-210VA auto feeding soldering station but have no direct experience with these.  Do auto feeding soldering stations work equally well for pcb soldering and soldering wires in a solder cup? I have a bunch of solder cup wire soldering coming up and would love to have a free hand to hold the wire wile soldering.  Are there any other makes/models I should look at?

Thanks,
Owen

While auto feeding soldering irons work great on soldering robots, I have found that using auto feeding soldering irons when hand soldering suck because they rarely put the solder where you actually want it.  This is why soldering robots have a rotational axis, but when hand soldering you tire pretty quickly if your constantly rotating your hand when soldering.   

In my case, I just bought one of the cheap foot type automatic soldering machine (about $50 on aliexpress), and then threw away the cheap 50w soldering iron using only the solder auto feeder.  This way I get the best of both worlds.  I can correctly position the solder with one hand having it autofeed while rapidly soldering with the other hand.   Its also great for drag soldering operations.

[OwenH]

I'm referring to soldering wires to pins that have a solder cup to solder there wire into.  The wire is already tinned so there is no need for a solder pot.

[mairo]

I own the previous version and LOVE it. Of course it has its purpose use and is not suitable for all applications, although it can be used just as a normal soldering iron as well if you can live with the bended tip options. One big draw back on my older unit, which seems fixed on the newer units is (not sure), is the tip of the solder feeding pipe. On the older units it used to be a plain metal, which sometimes if not carefully used, used to get stuck from molted solder, and actually this is the only reason why the wire would break, or need to change the feeding pipe on my system. The new system seems to have a plastic/Teflon tip that I am guessing should work better.

I think for your application might be a good use, can you post some pictures/model numbers as still abit unclear to me the actual use.