C210 Tip pinout

[Microitech]

Hi everybody,
I just bought from china a controller for soldering iron and C210 handle.
After some measurements i find that red it's attached to the end of the tip (the smallest part), blue on the middle and green it's the body of the tip.
Controller have 5 pin
1 it's sleeping detector that i have not connected
2 it's T, temperature measurement connected to green wire (body of tip)
3 ID, not connected
4 negative pole that i have connect to blue wire (middle of the tip)
5 positive pole connected to red wire

After few seconds on the tip become hot and start fuse, then i invert blue and green, put a new tip limiting current at 1 amp but the controller won't turn on and tip become hot.

What im doing wrong?
Thanks in advance

[SiliconWizard]

Sorry but we know nothing about the controller you are trying to use. Are you powering that with 12V to begin with, as shown in the images?

From your quick description of the issue, it just seems that the controller keeps the heater on for way too long, so it overheats. I've actually designed a controller for C210 cartridges, and while writing the firmware, my first try was also greeted with the tip getting so hot that it would get orange, but I quickly switched off the power to avoid it getting permanently damaged. (The culprit was that the controller was not fully switching off the heater when it should have.)

Assuming the controller you are using is not buggy, the most probably culprit is that it's unable to properly determine the temperature of the tip, so it just keeps heating it. The issue thus seems to be with temperature measurement.

Knowing nothing about this controller, nothing much can be said about it.
The one thing that looks very fishy to me is that from the connection diagrams they give you (shown in the second image), it suggests only connecting 2 pins of the C210, which IIRC can't work. You definitely need to connect the 3 pins to make it usable.

[Microitech]

Thanks for your reply.
From manufacture documentation looks that i have to use only 2 wires. Positive and T together. I had try that limiting PSU to 1Ah but won't turn ON. And now I'm scared to increase current and fry another tip.

[SiliconWizard]

From manufacture documentation looks that i have to use only 2 wires.

What documentation are you referring to?
If it's the one coming with this 3rd-party controller, then as I said, I think it's just wrong.

[thm_w]

The one thing that looks very fishy to me is that from the connection diagrams they give you (shown in the second image), it suggests only connecting 2 pins of the C210, which IIRC can't work. You definitely need to connect the 3 pins to make it usable.

Seems like it matches the pinouts here:
http://adgd.ru/2021/01/04/jbc-soldering-cartridges-pinouts/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/jbc-handle-cartridge-data/

Two of the leads are internally connected, so only two external connections can exist.

Its possible the thermocouple voltage is backwards though.

[SiliconWizard]

I'm almost 100% certain that no two connections are internally connected on those cartridges. When I was working on my controller, I derived that info from JBC patents, which describe their cartridges, and the heater is in series with the thermocouple (which is something that is correctly stated by some people on various websites, while there's also a lot of crap over there.)

So given the thermocouple is in series with the heater, what would externally appear as a short is actually the thermocouple itself. If you short those connections externally, then you'll just short the thermocouple.

Now some may have tried just using two wires, which would be the end of the thermocouple and the end of the heater, while the mid point would be just left floating. That should kinda work, although I wouldn't recommend this, as the heater in series would add some noise to the temperature measurement, and keep in mind the temp coeff on those is pretty low (about 10µV/°C IIRC, so that's about 3mV for 300°C!)

Looking at the diagram shown by the OP, the outter shell seems to be left unconnected. It's normally grounded. I don't know how the shown controller works, we have no schematic, so I don't know whether one of the connection is permanently grounded internally in the controller or not, and which one. I can just suspect that the temperature measurement does not work, from the symptoms. We know absolutely nothing about this controller, and obviously the OP should contact the seller first. I don't even know how this controller is supposed to detect what kind of tip is connected, since certainly they do not all have the same temp coefficient.

[Microitech]

This controller have an ID pin that detect which tip it's on use. In case of C210 have to be OL.
I found on this forum a drawing and as you say thermocouple should be in series with heater.
By my opinion should be connected the body to ground and the bottom to positive, accepting that there will be noise.

But if u check the attachments on first post, have a screenshot of Aliexpress description and they say that i have to connect only heater - (middle) and heater + (bottom), in this way i can't understand how will measure the temperature. 

[Hydron]

If you grab a C210 tip, you can easily work out the heater by the resistance. TC can be identified by using a decent DVM to look at which two pins show a small voltage when the tip temperature changes.

When I did this it did indeed appear that 2 pins are internally connected (can't remember which though), so the C210 heater is driven via the thermocouple junction. This is different to the C245, where it appears to be possible to drive the heater without passing current through the thermocouple junction (though that doesn't mean the stations drive them independently though!)

[sony85]

hello
did you figired out how to connect the wire into controller . i got the same and have the same poblem ?!