Just in case anyone is interested, here are the insides of the BST-863.
Hi there, watched your video today on this station. Quick question: do you have any line of contact to the Best company? Because it would be nice to give a user feedback directly to them about the user interface. Having digital rotary dials / rotary encoder instead of the touchscreen is definately preferred. As it allows much faster and more pleasant setting of the temperature and airspeed. - not just me who thinks this, many of us do and it's glaringly obvious.
Others (well, Lois) have also previously commented about the need for dials as when you have your head to the microscope. Well then you cannot actually see the controls on the hot air station without taking away your head from the microscope. Then putting it back again afterwards into the eyepieces. That is where the dials can really help. Do you can quickly turn up/down tweak the temp or airflow away off the baseline preset (as required) for whatever you are blowing at. Since some objects on the PCB have a higher thermal mass, whilst others not. Let's please make this process a more pleasant and rewarding experience. Well that is a way how it can be done.
A good question to be thinking about if there is no stop point on the dial, and it's a continuous rotation. Then having the station chirp or beep at you at coarser temperature increments (For example every 20C) might also be helpful here. To keep track of how far the temperature has changed whilst adjusting it. But buzzers can be pretty annoying. A better solution is just really good haptic feedback on the dial itself. Where the increments are easy to feel. Preferably with a fixed with a stop point at the far end of the adjustment range. I have seen other solutions be implemented very well (and digitally) on other test equipment such as bench supplies etc. by having actually 2 dials for the 1 control. To let the user adjust in both coarse and fine increments. This then permits both a fixed stop point, and a wide adjustment range. With very fast user adjustment to dial in the desired value.
BEST Company - please implement this! Isn't it the Best way?
Another point which you noticed in your review was the amount of air blowing. In this scenario a digital option in the settings to switch between logarithmic and linear scaling of the airflow control - could potentially also be helpful.
After having seen your teardown I really agree overall that this bst-863 station is really the Best one out there right now... haha. Excuse the joke. But it could be better with a refresh / revamp the design. Just keeping everything same except for the front panel and it's controls. That would be perfection
Here is my existing / previous discussion on this matter. Since there is now this other product with such type of dials control
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/new-hot-air-rework-station-nt-861dw-quick-(not-quick!)-761dw/msg2707394/#msg2707394
However it's not very likely to have such a great quality of build, which we would also like to see. All together in the same device.
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