Hello everyone,
I recently bought a JBC DDE 2 tool power supply with 2 x 245 hand pieces and bases for the workbench. The problem that I have is that where the DDE unit lives on my bench is a fair distance from where my second hand piece will be.
As a bit of a background which will hopefully answer the "why didn't you use 2 compact stations instead"
In the workshop I have a small bench space that I use for electronics work, I've got the scope, bench meters, power supplies and various other bits and pieces all laid out in front and in a very nice way.
Coming off that bench I have a large area that I keep clean (well try to) for working on big stuff, vehicle fridges, solar panels, standalone inverters and big-ish battery chargers.
As I work on so many varied items of different sizes I cannot use the compact stations with everything bolted to the power supply, it would just get in the way too much.
I have power cables running under the bench from my power supplies to anderson connectors so I can plug things in in that area and it all works well. I used to have a weller wtcpt iron with the transformer mounted under the bench and just the stand and iron on top. This way I can unplug the iron very easily and have the whole bench space free if I need to.
I am wanting to do something similar with the second jbc tool holder / iron in the sense that I run it from the dde control unit, cable under the benches to the tool holder.
Now, the problem is that for me to run the cables nearly under the bench it is about 5 meters. It is about 2 meters in a straight line but that is no where near practical. Mektronics said that jbc only do a 1500mm extension from control unit to tool stand and anything longer than that they experienced issues so jbc refuse to do longer ones.
My thought is that it is purely a voltage drop issue and there is too much lead resistance for the iron to operate effectively. I have multi core cable upto 4.59mm2 of copper (per core) that I was going to splice into the existing cable to extend it but I am not sure if I am missing something. Is my solution too simple or do you think it would work?
If there is anything I have missed, please ask and I will try to answer as best I can.
Cheers
-Chris