The tip looks a lot like the Hakko tips used on FX-951 =A0 Funny N. Au Group Electronics, http://www.AuElectronics.com http://www.AuElectronics.com/products http://augroups.blogspot.com/ ________________________________ From: cdb To: PICLIST@mit.edu=20 Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 5:26 AM Subject: [EE] Jovy isolder-40 soldering station. =20 As I refused to afford the freight costs of purchasing either a JBC or=20 Antex soldering stations, I persuaded myself to try this new fangled=20 soldering iron. It is advertised as being a smart soldering iron in that it auto sets the=20 tip temperature depending on how much heat it thinks a joint requires (I=20 assume it senses tip heat loss and adjusts). Today it arrived, and as sceptical as I was having seen the youtube videos= =20 of people enthusing over it, I have to say I'm impressed. Desoldering caps from 6 layer scalar cards (two massive power plains plus=20 copper pours on top/bottom layers) I normally have to resort to a=20 combination of 1 soldering iron plus heated solder sucker or soldering iron= =20 plus hot air pencil, with much swearing and invective towards whoever=20 invented multi layer PCB's with power plains. The Jovy quite happily melted= =20 the solder making it easy to wiggle the capacitors out and to resolder the= =20 earth legs back again. I then tried it out on a 100uF/450V cap in the power supplies I play with,= =20 these have the problem of running very hot so causing the solder to=20 'concrete'. These again normally require a reflow of solder, then a suck=20 and soldering iron combination and then again a resolder and then easing=20 the pins out of the board. Boards that have really suffered usually have=20 the copper core come out welded to the leg(s) of the capacitor and taking=20 ultra thin track with them as they go. The two boards that I tried my new=20 toy on, came away like butter and with very little application of the iron= =20 required. I have yet to try SMD chips from a soldering perspective, but so far taking= =20 into account it is a brand new tip I'm using, I'm quite impressed. It is=20 ugly and largish due mainly to the massive toroid transformer in the=20 station. Stockists that I've found apart from Alibaba. - US$160 - 190 (Howard Electronics) or US$179 - 199 from BGAStore*/=20 EliteBGA** online. Extra tip sizes are available from HIE and BGAStore. Colin *BGASTore are in the UK, their website didn't work properly for me=20 (Firefox, OK with IE), and I couldn't get their free freight option to work= =20 on whatever soldering/workstation I selected. **EliteBGA have a 5% surcharge for using PayPal, but offer free freight=20 from China. -- cdb,=A0 17/01/2013 -- colin@btech-online.co.uk --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .