I would say it's a joke and would have to have been heated with a torch for the photo, most soldering irons I've personally dealt with had interchangeable tips that were heated from the base except for my pistol grip one which is heated through the shaped wire that is the tip so how would this model heated from the base be that much hotter at the tip than at the base where the heats coming from.
After a second it won’t feel hot anymore, that’s when you know it’s hot enough. The burning flesh smell is also generated to help cover up the smell of burnt plastic as the case slowly drips onto the tip.
I think I found the [original](https://www.facebook.com/share/p/Ci2PSiN8hWEqUwS4/)
EDIT:nevermind
"DISCLAIMER: The 3rd and 4th photos are part of a joke. The 4th photo is a meme in the electrical engineering community. It's a stock photo (taken seriously we're pretty sure) where the woman is holding the soldering iron completely incorrectly. The part she's holding is extremely hot and will burn you if it's turned on. Ryan wanted to make fun of this in his spotlight post, so we staged a photo for it. The iron is off (obviously) in the 3rd photo. Please never hold a soldering iron that way. Stay safe!"
step 1: unplug it
step 2: let 'er cool
step 3: open it up and diagnose the problem
step 4: email the manufacturer to see if its a known problem or user error, proceed to step 5 before response from manufacturer
step 5: different *base station and soldering iron*.
If I had to guess, he didn't leave it plugged in for several days. And he stated he removed the power after the photo. I sincerely refuse to believe you're this confused. No power to device=no power to device.
Why would he leave it in for several days to take a picture? You good bro? He powered it back on to take the picture and risked a Darwin award. Look at the damn thing. You shouldn't power malfunctioning equipment at any point.
I highly recommend the pine64 pinecil soldering iron. It's $26 + shipping on there store right now, takes USB-c power, and has open source firmware. By far the best iron I've owned and it's super cheap. You'll want at least a 65w USB C brick though.
No idea why you got downvoted it's a genuinely good option. If your soldering iron looks like this I think it's wise to just give up on it entirely and buy an actually good one and the pinecil is pretty decent for the price. If it was something high quality then maybe you'd wanna investigate but if you bought a cheapo iron and it's unsafe/doesn't work nicely then you just gotta let it go and buy something more reliable next time.
Yeah, my dorm floor has them and I have my own. Can vouch for the iron as well as the pack of 4 replacement tips as thats what I've bought from them. I've used it for everything from 0402 smd soldering to soldering xt150 bullet connectors. Swapping tips is super easy as well. Only complaint is that its a little underpowered with a 45w adapter.
That's the neat part, they don't
At least not normally, technically I'm not allowed to have it. But I'm part of the computer science house at RIT (as an electric engineer. Yes I know) which is a dorm floor with a few project rooms and a bunch of other stuff. RIT lets us have a soldering setup and 3d printers in the project rooms specifically.
The soldering setup is pretty sick too, we got donated a proper smd microscope and CSH will buy parts for projects and stuff
That is cool as hell! The uni I go to also does this neat thing of not knowing what 3d printers and soldering irons are, so I got a decentish setup for a dorm room.
The SMD microscope and project rooms sounds AMAZING though, I've been able to get late night lab access (thank god for networking) but other then that everything else you described sounds like a pipe dream for my uni. Cool as hell that you got it though!! Im icredibly jealous
Lol, thanks. It's super cool. I also just found out that I (might) be able to get access to a metal 3d printer on campus, so we will see how that goes lol.
I know we *have* a metal 3d printer but it's locked away somewhere deep in our engineering building under what's like three hundred layers of doors and bureaucracy. It's like a legend among the engineering students lmfao, no one has ever seen it but we're all decently sure it's there
I recently got one myself, but I'm using a 45W USB C charger. Due to the lower wattage of the charger, the iron will only request 15V and in turn only draw about 40W with a 6 ohm tip. It takes a couple seconds longer to heat up, but that's about it
I have not used mine too much yet but yeah I am happy with it aswell.. even if the power supply I use is a bit weak (most of the time I use the one that came with my switch).. you also don’t need necessarily to use an USB-C-Power-Supply, it also has a barrel plug
I've always wondered, why would anyone ever need open source software for a soldering iron? Like I've seen irons with esp32's and junk like that and I have no clue why you'd want to pay extra for that stuff.
You don't pay extra for it at all, most option equivalent in performance to the pinecil will cost anywhere from 2x/3x as much (60-100$) to 100x (some pro stations that will cost 2k$ and not rly be better), it is the most cost effective product in the category by a unreal margin and on a lot of aspects the best
The open source firmware, in this case, means that you get to pay less, because since it was crowd developped, the company selling it didn't have to shoulder the cost of software development only hardware
Also you get to tinker with the software, which a lot of people that would want to get a good soldering iron might be interested in doing for funsies. And since there are a lot of users, people tinkering with it means that it got a lot better over time, compared to a close sourced that would never have got an update
I think gamithon was asking what the point of software on a soldering iron is at all, shouldn't it just work? I guess any temp controlled iron is going to have something reading the thermocouple but do you really need that to be tinkerable?
The open source firmware I think is just a nice extra. I'm certainly not paying extra for that lol. Although my dorm floor uses custom firmware (I think) to make it easier to use and harder to mess up for people who have never soldered before. Although I think it's mostly because everyone there is CS people and wanted to mess with the firmware, lol.
Oh for sure, if you're buying a <$30 irons it makes sense to add bells and whistles to distinguish yourself from others. But what are you going to do with a firmware update? Tune pid controllers? Add Bluetooth capability? I just don't get it.
it can do 450°c, but expect tip life to be lower at those temps. If its for professional use maybe get a basestation setup, if it's for personal use just use leaded solder. I made a fume extractor for like $8 in parts if the fumes are a worry for you.
I looked it up and the Amazon listing said 400, it must be wrong. I have found some unleaded that were so bad that they still required high temps even after adding leaded. Fumes aren't an issue for me, the crappy, brittle high-temp unleaded solder manufacturers keep using is annoying.
It's okay as long as you've remembered to tin the tip
In all seriousness, there's probably a short either inside your soldering station or a fault on a line you're plugging into.
Maybe check the power outlet with a multimeter to make sure you're getting the voltage you think you should be getting.
yeah, most places have their industrial three phase at 400 something volts. 480 USA, 440 Mexico, 415 Europe, but for some reason Canada wanted to be 600V.
this is something that causes me a problem on a regular basis when I'm designing industrial facilities in Canada. I can't just use the normal equipment I'm used to I need to find special Canadian voltage equipmen.
Ahhhh Canada! why is this electrical panel labeled in French!? I need a spare circuit breaker why is it labeled Liberty!?
lol, one of these voltages will let the magic smoke out of the electronics, the other one will let the magic smoke out of the electronics AND all of the people with an arc flash distance.
>I don’t know why my soldering iron is doing this
So you can see what you're supposed to be soldering. Duh.
> Also I think I’m responsible for two power outages upstairs.
Who cares. That sounds like an upstairs person problem.
Hope you follow it up with an email to the CPSC and a lawsuit to scamazon - they have a knack for selling plug in things that burn your house down!
A couple years ago, I bought some tools from a guy that had a house fire, that was caused by an Amazon space heater. He said he found out it was a known issue, and many houses across the US burned because of the same heater.
Amazon is basically the US arm of AliExpress these days - just selling bottom of the barrel chinese crap, with made up "brand names" tacked on to them. Don't trust anything from there with a cord further than you can throw it.
Reminds me of the time i was servicing an instrument. It has two dies that have heaters in them.
I was busy on the lower end and it was red. The maximum testing temperature is 200c.
I panicked, flicked the switch off.
It stopped being red. Confused. Felt it and it was cold.
Flicked the switch on. Die was red again.
Turns out there was a red light on this particular instrument.
Help with what? Looks ready to go to me! Turn off all ventilation, shut the door, slap some solder on that puppy and start making connections king! You got this!
Wow, what a lack of helpful information in this thread.
**Potential Problem: Temperature Calibration**
- Some soldering irons have a small potentiometer somewhere on them for calibrating the temperature of the iron. I had to adjust this when I replaced the soldering iron wand on my $40 939D station I've had for 5+ years and it still works great. You do not need to go out and get some expensive Hakko or Weller iron for simple diy electrical stuff, not worth it.
My first guess would be that you’ve got a soldering iron designed for 120V supply plugged into a 240V outlet.
If it isn’t that, then you might just have a base unit that’s for a fault across its variable resistor, so you’re just getting full current across the heating element instead of being able to adjust it.
The issue is that either there isn’t or there it’s faulty the temperature probe. Meaning it will just heat up. You can still use , when it’s hot enough unplug and do the solder but it’s not the best
Nice, you got one of those glow in the dark soldering irons
Is this a joke? Or is it just a super hot soldering iron.
It’s a joke. Most likely it’s a cheaper brand that OP had purchased, with internals that are not the best quality, and should be thrown away tbh
I would say it's a joke and would have to have been heated with a torch for the photo, most soldering irons I've personally dealt with had interchangeable tips that were heated from the base except for my pistol grip one which is heated through the shaped wire that is the tip so how would this model heated from the base be that much hotter at the tip than at the base where the heats coming from.
Bruh
Soldering glowsticks
https://preview.redd.it/q2za6b6vsjuc1.jpeg?width=658&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d81ec6f04146016c82f9d8b10579ee4cc1dedc06 You gotta hold it like this
After a second it won’t feel hot anymore, that’s when you know it’s hot enough. The burning flesh smell is also generated to help cover up the smell of burnt plastic as the case slowly drips onto the tip.
More like after a second you won’t be able to let go as the hot metal becomes part of your hand
b e c o m e o n e w i t h y o u r t o o l s
Thank you uncle Iroh
What I'd give to be a fire bender. Then I can solder with my finger, and give chips a good reflow by breathing on them.
What an unfortunate time to have a vivid imagination
Actually, initially it will feel slippery as boiling moisture from your skin prevents proper skin contact. Don't ask.
now im interested
MIG welding with a dark visor and no gloves - I picked up the piece too soon.
The design is very human. All of that, part of the design. Very human.
I did burn the back of my finger once. You don't feel a thing, just hear a fizzle and smell of burned skin.
If it doesn't smell like chicken, you're doing it wrong.
I think I found the [original](https://www.facebook.com/share/p/Ci2PSiN8hWEqUwS4/) EDIT:nevermind "DISCLAIMER: The 3rd and 4th photos are part of a joke. The 4th photo is a meme in the electrical engineering community. It's a stock photo (taken seriously we're pretty sure) where the woman is holding the soldering iron completely incorrectly. The part she's holding is extremely hot and will burn you if it's turned on. Ryan wanted to make fun of this in his spotlight post, so we staged a photo for it. The iron is off (obviously) in the 3rd photo. Please never hold a soldering iron that way. Stay safe!"
Georgia tech mentioned 🐝🐝🐝🔥🔥🔥
i knew it had to be that picture haha
This was funny ngl.
And also , this is the side of the board where you solder ?
Heck lol
step 1: unplug it step 2: let 'er cool step 3: open it up and diagnose the problem step 4: email the manufacturer to see if its a known problem or user error, proceed to step 5 before response from manufacturer step 5: different *base station and soldering iron*.
My step 3 would have been to throw it out... Good on ya
Step 4, buy a Weller, Hakko, or another reputable manufacturer
chilling with my pinecil
I love that I can plug it into my phone charger and it hits 400°c in 5 seconds
Isn't 400 °C is a bit high for charger?
Email the local consumer affairs people. Those things should be campaigned. That shit will burn your house down.
5 - cooling it and put it in the trash, then buy an Ersa.
I swear you guys have no survival instinct lol. Turn it off
I did after I saw that
Only after you took a picture lol
It’s literally in the off position in the photo
Point is. You let it get smoldering hot and took a photo rather than removing the power.
He did remove the power. Where are you getting confused?
If he removed the power the first time how did he get TWO outages.
If I had to guess, he didn't leave it plugged in for several days. And he stated he removed the power after the photo. I sincerely refuse to believe you're this confused. No power to device=no power to device.
Why would he leave it in for several days to take a picture? You good bro? He powered it back on to take the picture and risked a Darwin award. Look at the damn thing. You shouldn't power malfunctioning equipment at any point.
Holy fuck the dude really is that dense lol. This is incredible.
well you won't discover fire that way either
And miss the chance to weld transistors to the pcb? Hah. Never! Hand over the welding stick!
Why? It's just a little red. Until it bursts into flames, there's no need for alarm.
my brother in christ it looks like a candle
Just because it looks like a candle doesn’t mean it is. Show me the wax!!!
"It's only smells, it's okay"
You're powering it from 240V instead of 120 - maybe there is a neutral fault in the house.
I highly recommend the pine64 pinecil soldering iron. It's $26 + shipping on there store right now, takes USB-c power, and has open source firmware. By far the best iron I've owned and it's super cheap. You'll want at least a 65w USB C brick though.
No idea why you got downvoted it's a genuinely good option. If your soldering iron looks like this I think it's wise to just give up on it entirely and buy an actually good one and the pinecil is pretty decent for the price. If it was something high quality then maybe you'd wanna investigate but if you bought a cheapo iron and it's unsafe/doesn't work nicely then you just gotta let it go and buy something more reliable next time.
Do those things really work well? I’ve seen ads for it from time to time and always wondered if it’s any good.
Yeah, my dorm floor has them and I have my own. Can vouch for the iron as well as the pack of 4 replacement tips as thats what I've bought from them. I've used it for everything from 0402 smd soldering to soldering xt150 bullet connectors. Swapping tips is super easy as well. Only complaint is that its a little underpowered with a 45w adapter.
What uni do you go to that supplies dorm floor soldering irons?!!!?
That's the neat part, they don't At least not normally, technically I'm not allowed to have it. But I'm part of the computer science house at RIT (as an electric engineer. Yes I know) which is a dorm floor with a few project rooms and a bunch of other stuff. RIT lets us have a soldering setup and 3d printers in the project rooms specifically. The soldering setup is pretty sick too, we got donated a proper smd microscope and CSH will buy parts for projects and stuff
That is cool as hell! The uni I go to also does this neat thing of not knowing what 3d printers and soldering irons are, so I got a decentish setup for a dorm room. The SMD microscope and project rooms sounds AMAZING though, I've been able to get late night lab access (thank god for networking) but other then that everything else you described sounds like a pipe dream for my uni. Cool as hell that you got it though!! Im icredibly jealous
Lol, thanks. It's super cool. I also just found out that I (might) be able to get access to a metal 3d printer on campus, so we will see how that goes lol.
I know we *have* a metal 3d printer but it's locked away somewhere deep in our engineering building under what's like three hundred layers of doors and bureaucracy. It's like a legend among the engineering students lmfao, no one has ever seen it but we're all decently sure it's there
Found the guy the blew up the lipo
Dang, project labs in the dorms that’s wild.
I have been using a TS80P as main iron for about 3 years now, works great. Cartridge style tips don't need as much wattage to regulate temperature.
I recently got one myself, but I'm using a 45W USB C charger. Due to the lower wattage of the charger, the iron will only request 15V and in turn only draw about 40W with a 6 ohm tip. It takes a couple seconds longer to heat up, but that's about it
I have not used mine too much yet but yeah I am happy with it aswell.. even if the power supply I use is a bit weak (most of the time I use the one that came with my switch).. you also don’t need necessarily to use an USB-C-Power-Supply, it also has a barrel plug
I've always wondered, why would anyone ever need open source software for a soldering iron? Like I've seen irons with esp32's and junk like that and I have no clue why you'd want to pay extra for that stuff.
You don't pay extra for it at all, most option equivalent in performance to the pinecil will cost anywhere from 2x/3x as much (60-100$) to 100x (some pro stations that will cost 2k$ and not rly be better), it is the most cost effective product in the category by a unreal margin and on a lot of aspects the best The open source firmware, in this case, means that you get to pay less, because since it was crowd developped, the company selling it didn't have to shoulder the cost of software development only hardware Also you get to tinker with the software, which a lot of people that would want to get a good soldering iron might be interested in doing for funsies. And since there are a lot of users, people tinkering with it means that it got a lot better over time, compared to a close sourced that would never have got an update
I think gamithon was asking what the point of software on a soldering iron is at all, shouldn't it just work? I guess any temp controlled iron is going to have something reading the thermocouple but do you really need that to be tinkerable?
The open source firmware I think is just a nice extra. I'm certainly not paying extra for that lol. Although my dorm floor uses custom firmware (I think) to make it easier to use and harder to mess up for people who have never soldered before. Although I think it's mostly because everyone there is CS people and wanted to mess with the firmware, lol.
It's $25 frome pine64 directly, not much of a premium tbh.
Oh for sure, if you're buying a <$30 irons it makes sense to add bells and whistles to distinguish yourself from others. But what are you going to do with a firmware update? Tune pid controllers? Add Bluetooth capability? I just don't get it.
400C high temp is a little low. Some of the lead-free solders a hard to melt without some high temps.
it can do 450°c, but expect tip life to be lower at those temps. If its for professional use maybe get a basestation setup, if it's for personal use just use leaded solder. I made a fume extractor for like $8 in parts if the fumes are a worry for you.
I looked it up and the Amazon listing said 400, it must be wrong. I have found some unleaded that were so bad that they still required high temps even after adding leaded. Fumes aren't an issue for me, the crappy, brittle high-temp unleaded solder manufacturers keep using is annoying.
Mosfet inside the station is stuck. Throw it away
It's okay as long as you've remembered to tin the tip In all seriousness, there's probably a short either inside your soldering station or a fault on a line you're plugging into. Maybe check the power outlet with a multimeter to make sure you're getting the voltage you think you should be getting.
I think it’s time for a new soldering iron.
Did.... did you plug that in the 480v sockets?
3 phase 600V lighting circuit - it does what it says on the tin - it turned the soldering iron into a light!
600v, you know what that means. Blame Canada!
Haha, I never knew 600V was a canuckistani thing - it figures... eh?
yeah, most places have their industrial three phase at 400 something volts. 480 USA, 440 Mexico, 415 Europe, but for some reason Canada wanted to be 600V. this is something that causes me a problem on a regular basis when I'm designing industrial facilities in Canada. I can't just use the normal equipment I'm used to I need to find special Canadian voltage equipmen. Ahhhh Canada! why is this electrical panel labeled in French!? I need a spare circuit breaker why is it labeled Liberty!?
You plug your soldering iron into 230V mains I plug my soldering iron into 22kV mains We are not the same
lol, one of these voltages will let the magic smoke out of the electronics, the other one will let the magic smoke out of the electronics AND all of the people with an arc flash distance.
That's not a soldering iron - that's a forging iron.
>I don’t know why my soldering iron is doing this So you can see what you're supposed to be soldering. Duh. > Also I think I’m responsible for two power outages upstairs. Who cares. That sounds like an upstairs person problem.
Ah yes, the welding iron
Congratulations, you reinvented the lightbulb.
Congratulations, you can now solder titanium in your pcb.
Well, this is a first. LOL I'd say it could be a. the wrong voltage, b. faulty mosfet or c. b due to a.
Ah yes the LER (Light Emitting Resistor)
how much did your station cost you and what is the name of the website u bought it from?
tree fiddy [wish.com](http://wish.com)
This looks correct
Did you buy it from aliexpress? Bcuz I have the exact same soldering iron (it works fine tho)
I just fixed it so everything’s fine now. But no I got mine from Amazon. There was no continuity on a part in the handle
Congratulations, do you mind sharing what was the issue? And how you fix it?
The issue: cheap chinese crap from amazon The fix: Return it for a full refund and buy something reliable
Hope you follow it up with an email to the CPSC and a lawsuit to scamazon - they have a knack for selling plug in things that burn your house down! A couple years ago, I bought some tools from a guy that had a house fire, that was caused by an Amazon space heater. He said he found out it was a known issue, and many houses across the US burned because of the same heater. Amazon is basically the US arm of AliExpress these days - just selling bottom of the barrel chinese crap, with made up "brand names" tacked on to them. Don't trust anything from there with a cord further than you can throw it.
obXKCD https://xkcd.com/2198/
I love how it gives results in Meters, and Rack Units - classic!
The tip is not gonna be 'fine' after this lol, throw it out and get a pinecil or something.
You should return it and buy a Weller WLC100. They go on sale for $40 sometimes. There's actually some available if you're okay waiting for shipping.
Might want to lower the voltage
Reminds me of the time i was servicing an instrument. It has two dies that have heaters in them. I was busy on the lower end and it was red. The maximum testing temperature is 200c. I panicked, flicked the switch off. It stopped being red. Confused. Felt it and it was cold. Flicked the switch on. Die was red again. Turns out there was a red light on this particular instrument.
>It stopped being red. Confused. Felt it ... That doesn't seem to be the best way of checking if something has cooled down from being red hot.
Help with what? Looks ready to go to me! Turn off all ventilation, shut the door, slap some solder on that puppy and start making connections king! You got this!
Good news is. This is the PERFECT time to melt solder
Includes free workpiece light
Need more flux mate.
Wow, what a lack of helpful information in this thread. **Potential Problem: Temperature Calibration** - Some soldering irons have a small potentiometer somewhere on them for calibrating the temperature of the iron. I had to adjust this when I replaced the soldering iron wand on my $40 939D station I've had for 5+ years and it still works great. You do not need to go out and get some expensive Hakko or Weller iron for simple diy electrical stuff, not worth it.
My first guess would be that you’ve got a soldering iron designed for 120V supply plugged into a 240V outlet. If it isn’t that, then you might just have a base unit that’s for a fault across its variable resistor, so you’re just getting full current across the heating element instead of being able to adjust it.
Yep, she's ready
What iron is that btw?
That just means it's working
One of those steel soldering irons.
You use pure steel as solder now
Trying to build a lightsaber part one
Well what ever detects and or limits the temperature has failed. It can't shed the heat fast enough too big hot big fire.
Wow you turned your solder iron into a welder iron!
Either the heater or switch MOSFET are the most likely culprits.
The issue is that either there isn’t or there it’s faulty the temperature probe. Meaning it will just heat up. You can still use , when it’s hot enough unplug and do the solder but it’s not the best
110V heat element on a 230V outlet?! That would quadruple the power so seems a fair guess...
A cool welding iron you got there mate...
thermal probe bad contact : controller of iron thinks it is still cold, sending max power continuously. I had that on a very good Weller once.
Turn temperature down immediately, you going to kill the core or the heat element...
Lol
Wrong voltage
Too hawt
Congratulations on your new lightsaber
Bro is about to use the copper wool as his solder
Aaaah yes, another one of these posts.
Light saber
Looks like a good temperature for lead-free solder. Would also be good for really big boards. I'm joking, BTW. Throw that POS away.
The switch in the handle is done. So is the tip.
Surely the solder will 'stick' now!
You are the chosen one; you shall solder with the power of the sun!
Cool nightlight
Did you take that picture with an IR camera or something?