My order arrived yesterday but the soldering station was back ordered.
There were items in stock (according to web site) when I ordered mine.
By the way the free gift VOM Multimeter (when you order $50 of stuff) is
very nice, big digits, nonslip rubber housing, etc.
Anthony
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Mike and all,
Thanks for the heads up, Mike. I'm wondering if anyone has ordered and received the Circuit Specialists soldering stations which looked like Hakko 936's ? If so could they give us a similar report on that unit?
At $35.00 it is indeed a tempting buy, but with Mike's post...?
Thanks,
Tom McCulloch, WB2QDG
k2 1103
----- Original Message -----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mike S)
Date: Wednesday, December 1, 2004 10:53 pm
Subject: [Elecraft] Soldering station
(this is a resend to the list, the first was bounced by QTH.net
because their postmaster has some brain-dead SMTP spam checking
misconfiguration which produces false positives (for the subject
line "Circuit Specialists 701 rework station:. Grrrrr.)
About a week ago, Tom Hammond pointed out that Circuit Specialists
had some soldering stations which looked like Hakko 936's (
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/7307 ) for a
good price. I noticed that they had a through hole rework station
( http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/7789 ) which
also looked very similar to a Hakko offering. There has been some
conjecture that these are the same as the Hakko units, but are
being sold by an OEM to Hakko for considerably less.
Since my 20 year old Pace desoldering station recently died, I
thought I'd try out one of these, especially since the $200 price
was by far better than anything else available. This is about 20%
of what a similar Hakko unit runs.
I receive my station today, and can report that these are very
obviously NOT the same as real Hakko products. They're Chinese
clones. As mentioned earlier, these are made by Aoyue (
http://www.aoyue.com/english/index.htm ). From the looks of this
unit, I doubt Aoyue OEMs anything to Hakko - some things are
close, others are functional, but none are of the same quality.
The desoldering handpiece is of decent quality. It appears that it
will take Hakko spares, including heaters and tips. It could
definitely use a better tip - this one is chrome (?) plated and
won't "tin." The soldering pencil has a rubber grip instead of the
heat insulating foam a real Hakko has, but is overall of decent
quality. Both use multipin "microphone" style circular connectors,
which is different than what Hakko uses.
The station itself is workable, the electronics seem to do what
they're supposed to (they regulate tip temperature and have an LED
which lights when power is applied to the tip, so it blinks when
the tip is at the set temp). The controls (switches and pots) are
pretty cheap, I'll probably upgrade these. They silk screened
"Circuit Specialists" on the front, but didn't bother with a
Fahrenheit temperature scale. The manufacturer took time to grind
the markings off the ICs on the circuit board (they copied Hakko,
but don't want to be copied themselves, I guess), and no schematic
is provided in the manual.
The biggest obvious difference is that it uses a completely
different vacuum pump than a real Hakko - meaning no ready source
of spare parts. The pump actually works better than that on my
old Pace. One strange thing though, is that the instruction manual
(in pretty good Engrish [ http://www.engrish.com/ ]) clearly shows
how to disassemble and clean a Hakko pump. The actual pump is
completely different than that illustrated in the manual.
All things considered, it works well. Time will tell how this unit
holds up, but it seems to be a good deal. A couple of better
quality switches and pots, some real Hakko desoldering tips, and a
bit of time should take care of the minor issues.
_______________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net
You must be a subscriber to post to the list.
Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.):
http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm
Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
_______________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net
You must be a subscriber to post to the list.
Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm
Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
--
|--------------------------|
Anthony A. Luscre
K8ZT
Stow, Ohio
|--------------------------|
Visit My Website at
http://www.k8zt.com
|--------------------------|
_______________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net
You must be a subscriber to post to the list.
Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm
Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
