milwakee cordless soldering iron safety fail

[coppercone2]

So I was using my cordless M12 iron to tin some sheet before soldering together (I like to use a torch and clamps) and I left it upright turned on for like 2 minutes while I was cleaning the work piece before a re-flux.

The bottom of the metal shaft melted the plastic that it is threaded? into and started to sag. If it was placed over something resting on the beefy looking guard, the tip would melt free of the plastic and touch the surface. I don't know what bozo designed this shit. You can't turn your back for 2 minutes on this thing. 40 minutes of run time to ensure you burn your work bench down.

You might want to toss this thing if you own it, it requires a redesign to fix. Nice job with testing milwakee, perhaps you should improve tool quality instead of spreading your product variety out like oil on water.. try a thermal overload safety test for those high prices you demand 

I bet they put the entire R&D budget into 'one key' blue tooth bullshit rather then trying to figure out if it can burn someones house down.. perhaps you need a thermal engineer instead of another code monkey... have you heard of this? All I hear is battery life and one key.. no one gives a shit, just make it not break catastrophically and you will own the market

[tooki]

A quick search seems to indicate this is a common failure, with reviews reporting it going back for years. :/

[coppercone2]

i guess it needs to burn someones house down before they do anything about it lol. I got it last year

maybe you can put a radiator on it so it looks like a ray gun, at the expense of a little bit of battery life, it might not melt the housing. this is commonly done with forced air cooled vacuum tubes
 

https://media.istockphoto.com/vectors/ray-gun-illustration-vector-id652719034?s=612x612

[John B]

I'd be contacting a federal agency about product recalls.

[tooki]

i guess it needs to burn someones house down before they do anything about it lol. I got it last year

maybe you can put a radiator on it so it looks like a ray gun, at the expense of a little bit of battery life, it might not melt the housing. this is commonly done with forced air cooled vacuum tubes

Or buy a soldering iron from a real soldering equipment manufacturer. I wouldn't expect a power tool company to do a good soldering iron any more than I'd expect Weller, Hakko or JBC to make a good circular saw.

(Not saying an unsafe product is OK, but just... expectations.)

[coppercone2]

I did not really see a good one.. who makes a decent one? like a proxxon version. I am not sure my hope is too high in weller either.. (dave jones transformer safety video makes me nervous about their quality). I don't want one on AA batteries and none of the other interface adapters seem better engineered.

[tooki]

Weller WSM1C (the C being the battery version). I’ve used the non-battery version and it’s nice to work with, just not intended for large joints. Other than that, the TS80, TS100, and Pinecil. And of course you could run a regular soldering station off an inverter. Milwaukee might even make one powered off its battery packs.

[BlackICE]

I have a Milwaukee powered solder iron that works real well!

Since I already own some M12 tools and batteries. I connected 2 M12 2 amp hours batteries in series to power my Ksger T12 soldering station. It works about the same as using mains power.

[coppercone2]

be careful with it.. it was creepy as hell to see the tip slowly 'melt' out of its enclosure in the corner of my eyes. I had it set upright on the flat base battery that is also a stand and the iron was set to 45 degree position.. in the corner of my eye I saw it start to 'melt over'.... kinda looks like a giant spider moving its leg

Keep in mind I reseated the tip (wanted it to solidify in the correct position for some reason..) . It was curled over 30 degrees after maybe 5 seconds of overheating.

I kinda wonder what would happen if it melted right down and fell on the battery base.... I still need to verify if it has thermoregulation or if the circuit is blown and it was going full blast.

[coppercone2]

Does anyone have a good idea on how to make this device safe again?

I can re-mold a threaded connection for the iron..

The only thing I can think of is to put a heat shield on it, like the picture I posted. I could cut a disk of brass and braze it to a section of tube that fits snugly over the base of the iron to act as a heat spreader. Sure, it would be a small burn hazard, but at least I could leave it standing upright. I can test this mod with a thermal camera.

Does anyone have any other ideas? It needs to be fail-safer.

[BlackICE]

1. Remove the battery.
2. Keep the duty cycle down.
3. Throw in the trash, or sell it on ebay.
4. Keep the power switch off.

[coppercone2]

lol I don't think I will be selling defective equipment. trash can is tempting

[coppercone2]

replaced with milwakee 18v inverter and hakko station for 'belt portable' soldering iron

[BlackICE]

Since I recenty got a 3d printer I looked for an soldering adapter for a Ksger PCB to Milwaukee battery. There were a few of them but none that really fit my version of the PCB. I hack one of the STL files to make it fit an M18 battery and it works pretty well. Running only on 20V at 100% battery charge, but that more then enough for most uses.

If you make one be sure to set your low voltage cut off to protect the batteries from over discharge. I used a convervative 16V for the 5S pack.

[amyk]

Found an image of the temperature profile of the tip:

https://i0.wp.com/toolguyd.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Thermal-Image-of-Milwaukee-M12-Soldering-Iron.jpg

That doesn't look right, especially that hot spot near the bottom. It should look more like this:

https://thermalimaging-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/soldering-iron-thermal-image.jpg

[coppercone2]

you know I wonder if its from the tip or maybe there is a high resistance interconnect in there that melted the iron.... I wonder if they put a crimp or solder joint like RIGHT there, but it seems like some how the tip lost temperature control (but I am not sure).