open soldering iron

[dissidence]

http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Soldering_Iron_Driver

i found this project a few months ago, but i ordered up a board from seeed. http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/open-soldering-station-pcb-p-1282.html?cPath=174

i thought it was a interesting idea, and i have most of the passive stuff already, though i am lacking the pic and all the other IC's

its been a interesting build so far, and few the price i thought it was worth a try,  though i am interested to see what other people think about it.

[FlipThatFlop]

Its an interesting Idea but one thing I didn't see anything about is being ESD Safe so that might be a deal breaker for some people (Maybe).

Also details are a bit lacking about the power supply design.

http://dangerousprototypes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2457

I read the link above and he mentions bringing in 24VAC into the board and having a external Fuse. That could be a typo (240VAC standard in some countries) but you might want to double check. I wonder if the input to the board can be 120VAC&240VAC.

[fake-name]

Man, why go through all that work, and target a crap iron?

If you're going to make your own base-station, target JBC or Metcal irons. Doing all that work to just have what is basically a Hakko with a fancy base-station is silly.

[N2IXK]

I must have missed the reasoning behind developing an "open source" soldering iron controller in the first place. 

Are the commercial units somehow spying on users or implementing some kind of DRM, locking users into only using certain brands of solder/flux/etc.?

If any part of the soldering system was going to be "open sourced", why the temp controller and not the iron itself, to work against manufacturer lock-in of tips, heaters, etc?

[filip_cro]

I read the link above and he mentions bringing in 24VAC into the board and having a external Fuse. That could be a typo (240VAC standard in some countries) but you might want to double check. I wonder if the input to the board can be 120VAC&240VAC.

You need to use transformer 

[NiHaoMike]

24V just happens to be the control voltage most frequently used in HVAC applications, so 24V transformers (for both 120V and 208/240V inputs) are very common.

[theatrus]

24V just happens to be the control voltage most frequently used in HVAC applications, so 24V transformers (for both 120V and 208/240V inputs) are very common.

The same way 24VDC supplies are common, as a lot of PLC systems also use that as a power supply voltage.

[turbo!]

I must have missed the reasoning behind developing an "open source" soldering iron controller in the first place. 

You'll see the first post immediately refers you to commercial supplier. Take a bit of time to read.  It's profit motivated where the enthusiasts are basically enslaved to do their product development. Currently, making PCBs yourself is expensive and time consuming and supplies are expensive. Masking, etching, drilling, and all that, and the cost is strongly tied to volume.

The prototyping and manufacturing company hosts the project and operates prototyping business as well as selling cookie cutter copies of design produced by you members without having to pay a cent for royalty. The company controls the sales network and only sells through their reseller network, much like any other products.

Manufacturer makes copies of user created art in batches (to exploit economies of scale) in China.
They're sold in quantity to retailers (profit made)
Retailers sell them to consumers (who also make profit here)

The project host does not directly sell(as that is against the interest of distribution sales partners), but gives away products/coupon codes to randomly chosen Twitter/Facebook comments authors(publicity effort ran by the users for no fee which encourage people thus in turn making purchases through their distributors)

Not surprisingly, the host business sets the rule for the open source project setting attribution rules.

If CD-Rs were still $10 a piece and a writers were $5,000 and discs were how we listen to music, the equivalent model is where artists are encouraged to share their work for creative commons and pressing factory presses the discs and sells to retailers, retailers then sell the copies for amounts substantially more than what its costs them a piece to make, but a lot less than transferring the downloaded file to a CD-R yourself. 

The vendor needs the music to burn, so they get authors to volunteer their work for free and explicitly sign away the rights to the contents to "public domain" and capitalize while current open source electronics fad lasts.

Product copycat business has been going on for years. These days, that isn't without the guilt of intellectual property claims. By setting the rules themselves for creative commons license that is permissive of "commercial use", they paved a path in their interest so they have full reign to mass produce whatever they want to line up their pocket.

If you're working on it on a tinkering scale and collaborative development, a prohibition on commercial use would reduce the project from gravitating towards vendor interest.