[SMCARA] Caveat Emptor!

[Rene Ramirez]

Buyer beware!  I bought a SMD hot air rework station off of Amazon a couple
of days ago.  Really cheap too less than fifty bucks delivered.  Of course
it isn't UL or any other consumer safety certifying agency listed so I took
a chance with it.  There was some folks that commented that this particular
unit had some safety issues so to be careful with it.  What issue?  Oh like
the HOT and NEUTRAL swapped and possibly a shorted heating element.  Well,
I got it in and decided to err on the side of caution and opened up the
case.  Sure as doughnuts...The hot and neutral are swapped.  For those of
you that aren't electricians let me tell you why that is a bad thing.
Especially in this case.  The neutral was going through a fuse to the
switch then to the power supply and the hot was going straight to the power
supply/heater element.  The neutral essentially carries no current so the
only thing keeping this from catastrophic stuff catching on fire failure is
the breaker at the panel.  Also, since it was not switched, everything in
there is hot as well.  just sitting there waiting for something awful to
happen.  and again not fused locally so if you had it on the bench plugged
in and decided to go lay down. and something went bad...Can you say "Class
Charlie" fire in the middle of the night?  But, this safety issue was an
easy fix.  Just cut the heat shrink and swap the hot-neutral back to where
they are supposed to be.  Problem solved.  Now for the heating element.

The problem has been that the ground wire has slipped out from under the
mica wrap and touched the 115vac heating element.  This can be BAD JUJU and
in the case of the hot/neutral swap cause a major panic in the electron
world as they all try to go to ground in a mass exodus!  In my case all
good!  but still did a once over looking for potential bad solder joints
etc.  None.  did one more resistance check and looks good.  Plugged in and
turned it on.  No smoke no arky-sparky! (well a little smoke due to it
being a new heating element).  Do I trust it to leave it plugged in and
off...NO!  I tend to not tempt fate that way with a non UL listed device.
(PS did you know that if you have a non UL listed personal appliance on a
government installation and it starts a fire that YOU CAN BE HELD
PHYSICALLY AND FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DAMAGE unless you get the
government to sign a waiver....)

The moral of this email?  If you buy something that isnt UL listed, check
the reviews of it out and for Pete's sake, do a safety inspection on the
thing to verify that the power is hooked up correctly and that a resistance
check shows good before plugging it into the wall.  And if you're not sure
of what you are looking for...ASK SOMEONE (this list is a good place to
start)

other than that, its a neato little re-work station and I can do SMD stuffs
now!

Ren...W3BNY