[Elecraft] Soldering station

[redmen1969 at optonline.net]

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: w8ur at flatsurface.com (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. 
> 
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