$27 T12 station beats Hakko 888

[KL27x]

Yeah, I realize this is old news for many. I see SparkyBG Unisolder has been around for a few years, now. And many controllers/stations available from China. I have been under a rock.

Well, I finally got a Bakon 950D (for $27), thanks to the endorsement of STJ and other members, here. And I put it to the test.

In short, the Bakon, at only 19.45VDC, is at least as good or better than the 888 in every test I have made so far, using similar tips. Warm up time is fairly identical. Melting giant solder blobs on copper clad, the Bakon was slightly better in thermal response/output using BCF3 tip on each. With the tiny tips, they are both do about the same. Not that great. But now I have an even bigger itch to see what happens at 26V.  I also did a good amount of actual soldering of SSOP IC's, some SOT23's, and passives. The T12 tips and Bakon station performed great.

Main gripe with T12 tips are the length. Even though the tip to grip distance is much shorter, the overall length of the handpiece is greater than the 888/936... So if you actually hold it up close to the tip, you are dragging a lot of cord on the back-heavy handpiece. I hacked about 3/4" off the end of my clone handpiece, and that's all she can give up before I'm at the end of the actual connector.

So what's wrong with it? Only 19.5V. Power switch is not firmly in place, which is potentially a safety issue. It's just friction preventing one from pulling out the switch and the live mains wire with it. There's a little wiggle in the tip to handpiece fit, which is mildly irritating. And the UI... it's ok. It saves your last setting, which is adjustable to individual degrees, but apparently you can't change the 5 presets, which will forever be in 50C increments.

Anyhow, thanks to STJ for suggesting the Bakon. And yeah, I have decided to abandoned the 888 mod... it would require cutting a lot of power planes and traces... and the UI would still suck, afterall.  It looks like Sparky BG and Marco Reps have already figured out and shared all of the technical hurdles.  And it looks like the Chinese market already has all the DC powered T12 controllers one could imagine for pocket change. But I still want to make my own, eventually, to run off unfiltered AC like Sparky's, and to fit in the 888.

[stj]

i cant see sparky's design going into a hakko shell easily, it has a huge parts count.

try the TS100 design, but ditch the gyro i.c. and replace the tiny OLED with a common 0.96" one from ebay - maybe even the new colour one. 
that should fit into the hakko shell pretty easy.