I want to say the Pinecil, which I've been anxiously awaiting, is significantly less expensive... But shipping of $11 (though looks like I accidentally selected courier shipping so it's more like $50) brings it up closer to parity with the TS-100 kits you can get on Amazon for the TS100s.
I'm still really excited about the Pinecil though! I don't solder a lot, so I'm looking forward to having a quick kit I can whip out instead of my whole toolbox of soldering tools with my ancient but trusty Weller.
Same, super excited to have something on my desk rather than setting up my Weller! I would argue this is closer to a TS-80 than a TS-100, which cost usually around $75.
I think the TS100 has a big advantage that you can easily rig up a barrel DC connector to XT60/XT90 connector, and use it to solder directly from a charged portable lipo battery.
I think it may be legal, since saying it qualifies as a disclaimer. Basically the default is 24m (EU) or 12m (US), but it should be legal to explicitly state another term for warranty.
Some shops have down to 1 week of warranty, some (e.g. wholesale items) may state to accept no returns, etc.
> I think it may be legal, since saying it qualifies as a disclaimer. Basically the default is 24m (EU) or 12m (US), but it should be legal to explicitly state another term for warranty.
No. While in the US people seem to be able to get away with anything as long as there is a disclaimer, EU law is strict - it's minimum 24 months per Art. 17 EU directive 1999/44/EC (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...), with an exception for second-hand goods (Art. 16 of said directive, with the decision on the exact duration being left to the member states).
B2B transactions, however, are pretty much unregulated wild west.
It may be illegal to sell locally but completely legal to import for personal use (e.g. because Pine64 isn't conducting business in your country at all, they have no obligation to comply with local regulations, only you, the importer of record, have those obligations and you probably aren't required to provide yourself with a warranty).
Been super eager to get one of these after reading the announcement last time on HN. Placed an order right away! $25 for a TS-100/80 like features with a RISC-V processor?! Sign me up! To be honest, I have no clue why I need a RISC-V chip on my soldering iron...but seems like it'll be worth the $40 (with shipping) worth of entertainment.
Edit: Seems like this batch has a GPIO + JTag breakout board!
Soldering irons generally are not expensive. Antex which is a fairly reputable soldering iron brand (as far as i understand) sell them as low as 10$ on amazon
Antex irons don't seem to get enough love in my opinion. They are (at least partially, I think) made in the UK and I've always preferred them as the handle/body is much thinner than many of the other available irons which I find a lot easier to use.
Antex have switched their production to China a while back, including their precision and soldering stations line.
They are cheap but with the exception of a few product aren't that good of a value for money for what you get.
Their soldering stations are rather anemic and getting bits is rather hard (they also have a very limited line of bits to begin with).
Their gas powered portable soldering irons are quite good they don't overheat, have decent control and are well built but their electric ones are simply a miss these days.
Dumb AC soldering irons don't have to be (unless you really care about temperature accuracy and ESD), portable gas soldering irons are also essentially glorified lighters.
However when you get into a DC soldering irons you do start getting into complexity that isn't as cheap to do safely.
I'm skeptical of your skepticism. Monitoring temperature & adjusting current are tasks humanity has, in my view, gotten quite good at & made quite routine, safely & cheaply.
To control when/how it turns on and off, show status on a display, ... It being programmable is a bit of a gimmick for most, but the usual caveat applies: You might not need it, but if you want/need some customization it's very nice if your hardware actually allows you to add custom firmware. (E.g. for the TS100 there were some features that as far as I know first featured in custom firmwares, e.g. flipped display for left-handed users)
The biggest application is probably closed-loop PID temperature control. Such a control loop doesn't take much of a CPU but it definitely exceeds the capabilities of something like a 555 timer.
Edit: Bit of a funny aside; the editor who wrote the subtitle incorrectly identifies the P in PID as "Peripheral" even though the article correctly states it is "Proportional" in the fourth paragraph.
First, it doesn't, but it can be easier or cheaper if you use one. You can build a closed-loop controller using only analog electronics, but it doesn't mean you should. Because silicon is so cheap, sometimes it's reasonable to use a $1 microcontroller and 20 lines of code, instead of 3 opamps, 5 resistors and 3 capacitors. I don't mean that software is always a good idea, but you get my point.
Next, if you want an LCD-based user interface (it doesn't mean you should, you can use an analog potentiometer, but having a display is the norm these days), you need a microcontroller anyway. You need a microcontroller to control the pixels on a screen or the numbers on a seven-segment display, and you also need software to implement functionality such as "press this button to change the temperature", or "save the current settings".
Also, these "novelty" soldering irons can power themselves via USB Type-C by using the USB Power Delivery protocol (it doesn't mean you should, but people are having fun doing it), which is a digital protocol, you definitely need a controller and software to do the handshake in order to get DC power. A single microcontroller can perform this task as well.
Now, does it really need a RISC-V microcontroller, instead of, say, a 8-bit 8051 chip? No. But the target audiences of this soldering iron are hardware tinkers, and previously they already ported things like Tetris and Game of Life to the soldering iron, so... Why not?
It's theoretically possible with USB-C to avoid the power MOSFET for the heater, and instead instruct the power supply to vary the voltage between 5v and 20v which should adjust the heat output by a factor of 16... Could be a neat way to make an ultra low cost iron...
What could be the max switching frequency of a USB-C power supply? I'm assuming the MOSFET allows fine-grained PWM of the heater which the power supply itself may not be able to replicate.
USB type-c power delivery is 5 or 20V it’s not a variable voltage supply.
Switching between the modes isn’t fast enough and if you do try to pulse modulate it you more likely than not to kill your power supply as they weren’t designed for that.
there is a Programmable Power Supply Mode (PPS) that was added[1] that lets a device dial in exactly what voltage it wants, as the parent comment said, no buck needed (assuming it's within current limit). it made sense to specify. variable output doesn't add much complexity, and it can reduce part count in the exact way we see herr- remove a voltage converter.
on the other hand, just a guess, but I'd guess well under half of supplies (wall & battery) have PPS support. just last month I went out & bought the pro version of the battery back I had been using: same size, same capacity, more expensive but it had PPS, which I wanted to play with (as a hobbyist), and can supply more watts (honestly not that important to me atm).
>The PPS standard refers to the power supply can exchange data with the power supply every ten seconds, so that the power supply can dynamically adjust the output voltage and current according to the condition of the receiving product specifications.
This isn't suitable for this.
In general you do not do any high frequency modulation in the power supply, this is not the component for that.
You put your capacitors and the switching required where it's needed more or less the supply can be constant.
We can start the discussion on soldering irons, I guess.
There seem to be two main strategies. I'm not super well versed on the pro's & cons of each. A lot of soldering irons use a resistive heating element. Dump current in, get heat. Higher end soldering irons tend to use high frequency inductive heating. Hakko has a write up here[1].
Agreed that for a switching supply, PPS isn't going to help a lot. For a resistive soldering iron, a PPS capable USB power source would be very helpful. All that's needed is a control loop, to monitor temperature & adjust the asked for input voltage and/or current.
Honestly not sure what the Pinecil or the well known TS100 soldering iron are, resistive or RF inductive. It'd be great if they were RF inductive heating, & PPS wasn't helpful, as the much finer control would be great. I hadn't considered that they could be.
I dunno, but my local postal service and/or their customs clearance procedures have a tendency to add a week or more of latency to delivery so I'm hoping that paying the extra $19 lets me avoid that...
Oh god. Just had a quick Google, looks like the EU has decided to make VAT payment mandatory without the previous up to 22€ exception (https://www.paketda.de/news-zollfreigrenze-22-euro-abgeschaf...). That's gonna be one of a nightmare, international shipping already takes ages...
The body is plastic just like TS-100. I've changed 2 cases on TS-100 already because they crack around the tip socket even without tightening. Only because of that issues this is not interesting.
51 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadI'm still really excited about the Pinecil though! I don't solder a lot, so I'm looking forward to having a quick kit I can whip out instead of my whole toolbox of soldering tools with my ancient but trusty Weller.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ts100+lipo+cable&client=fire...
Some shops have down to 1 week of warranty, some (e.g. wholesale items) may state to accept no returns, etc.
No. While in the US people seem to be able to get away with anything as long as there is a disclaimer, EU law is strict - it's minimum 24 months per Art. 17 EU directive 1999/44/EC (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...), with an exception for second-hand goods (Art. 16 of said directive, with the decision on the exact duration being left to the member states).
B2B transactions, however, are pretty much unregulated wild west.
Legal aspects aside, it also isn't exactly a vote of confidence in the quality of the product. I mean, 30 days, really?
1: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers...
Edit: Seems like this batch has a GPIO + JTag breakout board!
$25 for a high powered device that one holds in their hand and has a heating element would have me worried.
They are cheap but with the exception of a few product aren't that good of a value for money for what you get.
Their soldering stations are rather anemic and getting bits is rather hard (they also have a very limited line of bits to begin with).
Their gas powered portable soldering irons are quite good they don't overheat, have decent control and are well built but their electric ones are simply a miss these days.
However when you get into a DC soldering irons you do start getting into complexity that isn't as cheap to do safely.
Unfortunately it looks like all the figures are 404 on the article, fortunately IA seems to have them https://web.archive.org/web/20201112004309/https://www.elect...
Edit: Bit of a funny aside; the editor who wrote the subtitle incorrectly identifies the P in PID as "Peripheral" even though the article correctly states it is "Proportional" in the fourth paragraph.
TL;DR: Software is eating the world.
First, it doesn't, but it can be easier or cheaper if you use one. You can build a closed-loop controller using only analog electronics, but it doesn't mean you should. Because silicon is so cheap, sometimes it's reasonable to use a $1 microcontroller and 20 lines of code, instead of 3 opamps, 5 resistors and 3 capacitors. I don't mean that software is always a good idea, but you get my point.
Next, if you want an LCD-based user interface (it doesn't mean you should, you can use an analog potentiometer, but having a display is the norm these days), you need a microcontroller anyway. You need a microcontroller to control the pixels on a screen or the numbers on a seven-segment display, and you also need software to implement functionality such as "press this button to change the temperature", or "save the current settings".
Also, these "novelty" soldering irons can power themselves via USB Type-C by using the USB Power Delivery protocol (it doesn't mean you should, but people are having fun doing it), which is a digital protocol, you definitely need a controller and software to do the handshake in order to get DC power. A single microcontroller can perform this task as well.
Now, does it really need a RISC-V microcontroller, instead of, say, a 8-bit 8051 chip? No. But the target audiences of this soldering iron are hardware tinkers, and previously they already ported things like Tetris and Game of Life to the soldering iron, so... Why not?
EDIT: The tip and the base are %100 the TS100, so I guess they took the TS100 and added the USB QC of the TS80.
Oh. And this will be my first RISC-V device too :)
Switching between the modes isn’t fast enough and if you do try to pulse modulate it you more likely than not to kill your power supply as they weren’t designed for that.
on the other hand, just a guess, but I'd guess well under half of supplies (wall & battery) have PPS support. just last month I went out & bought the pro version of the battery back I had been using: same size, same capacity, more expensive but it had PPS, which I wanted to play with (as a hobbyist), and can supply more watts (honestly not that important to me atm).
[1] https://www.pengohome.com/Learn_Detail.asp?LiD=D15D68D2FEB0F...
This isn't suitable for this. In general you do not do any high frequency modulation in the power supply, this is not the component for that.
You put your capacitors and the switching required where it's needed more or less the supply can be constant.
There seem to be two main strategies. I'm not super well versed on the pro's & cons of each. A lot of soldering irons use a resistive heating element. Dump current in, get heat. Higher end soldering irons tend to use high frequency inductive heating. Hakko has a write up here[1].
Agreed that for a switching supply, PPS isn't going to help a lot. For a resistive soldering iron, a PPS capable USB power source would be very helpful. All that's needed is a control loop, to monitor temperature & adjust the asked for input voltage and/or current.
Honestly not sure what the Pinecil or the well known TS100 soldering iron are, resistive or RF inductive. It'd be great if they were RF inductive heating, & PPS wasn't helpful, as the much finer control would be great. I hadn't considered that they could be.
[1] https://www.hakko.com/english/products/hakko_fx100.html
It was already a problem ordering from Pine and this also exceeds the 22 Euros.
It lists “USB type C: PD and QC 3.0 12V-20V 3A”.
Would this work via a USB Type A port, with an A-to-C adapter/cable?
Type A ports on wall chargers can support QuickCharge - and yes, this will work with an A to C cable.
Having used the similarly spec'd TS100, you're better off getting yourself a 20V capable USB C brick for this.