Soldering station Pause LED

[socketa]

Hi Peeps,
Have recently acquired a soldering station.
Seems to operate OK, except that the green pause LED does not appear to function.
Am assuming that the pause LED indicates when the station is not heating the iron?
Have let it sit for 5 mins, and the iron reaches the set temp, but the green LED doesn't even blink.
Tested it with a 3v lithium and it turns on (better with 2 lithiums in series, to give 6V)
The wires (red and white) from the green LED, plug into the circuit board, along with two other wires that come from the top two pins of the iron socket (black and green)
Have taken a photo of the circuit board where this connector plugs into. (it's the smaller brown connector)

Is this looking like a fault in the iron, or a problem with the circuitry?

[stj]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

it may work with a special stand.

[socketa]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

Hi again,
Hope all is going swimingly

Didn't think of that
What difference would a stand make?
Multimeter shows continuity from the metal of the iron to earth.
And after your suggestion, tried pointing the iron downwards at all angles when the iron had reached the set temperature - but still no green LED light

[stj]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

some irons from Hakko and JBC for example have optional special stands.
the stand plugs into the controller, the iron plugs into the stand.
some stands have a microwsitch on them, some just detect the shaft of the iron against the stand - because it's earthed.

you should trace the pause wires into the iron handle and see if they actually connect to anything - they may not even be used on the iron plug - only the controller.

[socketa]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

Thanks bud, will bear that in mind if the following doesn't yield results

Might have just found it after trying a different combo of wider search terms:

From www.xytronic.com

ENERGY SAVER: Automatically powers down after 15 minutes of idling indicated by the Pause LED-saving power while extending tip life.

So will try it again for longer than 15 minutes

BTW, Are these tips likey to be legit or lefake?:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1set-Sold...item1e76333496

[stj]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

http://sg.rs-online.com/web/p/solder...ories/0255067/

notice the line

Features selectable sleep function to prolong tip life and an energy saving automatic shut off function

[stj]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

probably fake,
but dont worry about it.
that design of tip that fits inside the element is very good unlike the old hakko design that slots over the element.

[socketa]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

Nice.
Am assuming that lead-free tips are suitable for lead soldering?

[stj]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

yes.

btw, clean the tips before you turn the iron off to make them last.
it's leaving solder on them that does them in because of the flux.

[mariushm]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

@socketa

Some stands have a hall effect sensor somewhere close to where the tip of the iron would normally be. When you put the iron in the stand, the sensor would be affected by the metal of the tip and change it's value, so that's how the main soldering station knows you placed the soldering iron in the holder.

I have a Pace HW-50 soldering station that has a stand with such a system but it was optional for the hw-50 (the cheapest model in the series) so it's not installed on my stand.
By design, if the iron holder has a sensor, my station would bring the temperature down to 100c (from 180-250c) after 30 seconds of "stay in holder" time.

Some guy on the internet made an alternative to the Pace design by using a very narrow angle infrared led and an infrared sensor placed on the other side side of the holder. When iron goes in the stand, the tip interrupts the infrared beam and the station detects the soldering iron as inside the stand.
It's fairly easy to add something like this to your own station but you do have to know the pinout for your connected, in my case it's easy (ground, 5v, state)

@stj

The correct way to preserve your iron is to clean the tip after usage (wipe the solder off using chemwipes or some paper handkerchiefs/towels), then apply a new layer of solder to the tip and leave it there. The sacrificial solder prevents the copper in the tip from oxidizing.

The most modern fluxes found in regular solder wire (no-clean etc) are not that powerful/corrosive , they won't kill the tips in any reasonable amount of time.

When you want to use the iron again, you wait until the iron heats up, clean the old solder that you applied before you finished using the iron last time using a paper towel or something like that (because it's dirty/oxidized etc), wipe the now clean tip on the wet sponge to shock away whatever oxides are still on the tip and quickly apply a bit of fresh solder which would prevent the tip from oxidizing and also make heat transfer between tip and your pins/pads on pcb faster.

Then you bring the iron tip to your surface (what you want to solder), touch the iron to the pin or pad or whatever, and bring in the solder wire with built in flux and that solder wire actually solders.

See this video at about 1:20 to see what i mean : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SnOW2VdCTI

Some of the tips in the series of videos he made are excessive but he teaches a course for avionics that forces him to follow some strict standards.. you can see it almost gets ridiculous when he has to solder a resistor on a pcb : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vynb_HdEIDU

[stj]

Re: Soldering station Pause LED

very few tips have exposed copper.

btw, that guy should have just used a pyro-sensor from a pir unit.