Products > Other Equipment & Products

More product teardowns

<< < (3/3)

Alex:
ERSA I-CON 2 with Serial Port Teardown

This is Ersa's flagship hand-soldring station, considered one of the top manufacturers of soldering solutions. This particular one can accept two soldering tools and features a 'serial port' to connect to control a fume extractor or an IR heatingplate. I would love to explore the rest of these components, but the 'serial port' version only comes with the i-tool (the soldering pencil iron). My expectations are high, you had better got this right Ersa!

First off, a view of the station I will be taking apart (after turning on):



Splash screen. The illuminated ON/OFF switch is at the front together with two DIN 45326-type connectors for the tools. There is a banana plug for an esd mat in the centre. The user-interface input is the rotary encoder/pushbutton at the top right. Very practical as the station has many options in the form of a menu list. It looks a bit 'off' without a marking saying 'Menu' or 'Set', that would be a nice addition. The front is from aluminium but unfortunately it is just adhered to the case. Under heavy use at elevated temperatures the sharp corners at the bottom might become detached.



Bottom view. Rubber feet, vent cutouts and 4 torx screws. Very robust.



Back side. IEC connector with built-in fuse and space for a spare one. Excellent. Above that is the 'serial port'. A huge sticker warns this is not an RS232 standard port, yet they insist on calling it RS232 on the board and documentation. Again no marking which gives the impression it was an afterthought or a marketing experiment.



Before the main event, lets have a look at the soldering iron and stand. The i-tool is very small and ergonomic. It has a silicone anti-slip surface (grey) and can deliver 150W. What doesnt make sense to me is that the station is rated at 120W and so is the internal transformer. Maybe the transformer is momentarily overloaded (the data plate should still say 150W) but what is clear is that you cannot be using both tools at the same time (the menu wont let you anyway). Despite the large power the handle doesnt get too hot. The stand is from solid high temp rubber. Big thumbs up for doing this as it can be put under hot water and brushed to clear all the solder blobs. The base has 6 holes where, I believe, you are supposed to mount soldering tips as shown. It works great. However I only received 4 pillars (as shown), I could not find any as spare parts, and they are not mentioned in the user manual. The soft abrasive pad comes as standard.



Here is the soldering pencil taken apart. Tip, retainer assembly, heating element and main body. The heating element/tips are very small hence very reactive to temp changes. Inside the main body there is a sensor assembly (not reed switch) to detect when the tool is about to be used.



Detail of the heating element. Robust sealed construction with gold-plated contacts.



The connecting cable is insulated with high temp silicone, and I will prove it to you!



Cover off. I am pleased to see the space is actually used and there are no lead slugs for weight. Instead, a linear power supply adds the majority of the weight. This is great as, combined with the feet, it wont go anywhere on the bench. Centre(almost) tap on the transformer, the 24V winding is for the heater and the tap is for the control electronics. High temp fibreglass sleeving and connectors for almost all cabling inside the unit.







Detail from the front connectors area. Insulated blade terminals and a true ON/OFF switch. Those things on the trafo are not rust, but some sort of cardboard remains? probably from the part's packaging. The earthing banana socket is soldered well (although it would not meet IPC standards). It does however lack a sleeve, possible a heatshrink piece which would add some mechanical support.



The banana socket is soft-grounded via a 220k resistor, while the soldering tip is hard grouned. I was surprised to see a PCB pin was used and not at least a blade terminal. An in-line resistor from the banana to the IEC connector would have been more reliable. I belive Tektronix had an issue with PCB-based grounding on the TDS220 DSOs and had to do a recall.



I will post up to here to save it.

Alex:
Part 2

Here is the control electonics. 3 assemblies: LCD, main board and 'RS232' board.



Detail of the heater power section. Optocouplers were used in combination with SanRex Triacs to power the heaters. No high power rectifiers were used, the heaters are fed with AC.



Detail of current sense shunt resistors. On the right you can see the diodes and rectification circuits for these signals.



Detail of the MCUs. Two ATMEGA AVRs clocked at 16MHz and logic buffers, I belive for the LCD. Power supply on the left, PCB fuse on top. The function of the smaller MCU is not clear, at I guess I would say it is responsible for the devices connected to the serial port.



LCD assembly. Is uses LED backlight.



Finally, detail of the 'RS232' board. All signals are isolated using an optocoupler, an integrated transformer isolator (ADUM1401) and a relay (other side)! On the other side there is also a MAX3226 - a feature rich high speed version of the MAX232. What is odd is that the buzzer (used to indicate that the tip temperature is within a preset window) is placed on the 'RS232' board when I know the non-RS232 versions also have a buzzer. Most likely the smaller AVR on the main board took up the space originally intended for the buzzer. Anyone with an ICON2, non serial port version we would like to see your main board! ;-)



Lets see how quickly I can put everything back together -no leftover screws-. All this soldering station talk made me want to solder; like watching cookery shows makes you hungry.

Alex

tekfan:
Wow! That's quality construction right there. Very interesting shunts on the main board. I still can't believe that small heating elememt can supply 150 watts of heat. Amazing!

zaoka:
What I noticed with Ersa is that its tips are very good, somehow its easy to solder with. Its been long time ago but I remember all technicians prefered Ersa over Weller.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page