appiah4 wrote on 2025-11-14, 08:36:

I recently upgraded from a simple pen solder to a Yihua 878D solder/rework station and I love it.

I also have that soldering station under a different brand although it's probably the same chinosium tech. It's surprisingly good and very affordable, not the fan of the short, rigid tangly wires though.

Mandrew wrote on 2025-11-15, 09:37:

appiah4 wrote on 2025-11-14, 08:36:

I recently upgraded from a simple pen solder to a Yihua 878D solder/rework station and I love it.

I also have that soldering station under a different brand although it's probably the same chinosium tech. It's surprisingly good and very affordable, not the fan of the short, rigid tangly wires though.

I have this exact same hot air station. Incredibly cheap, but so far has worked just fine for my needs.

In general I’m of the opinion that one should invest more for quality soldering iron/station and save money with these additional tools that aren’t always even needed. I would also skip combo stations, because iusing individual tools makes upgrading equipment much simpler and in the case of something like PSU failure, you don’t lose all your equipment. When you buy a quality soldering station, you can most likely use it just fine for 20 or more years.

Soldering iron is the most important tool in electronics repair and when you are working with something with large ground planes, a poor iron will make it an infuriating and frustrating experience. It is not about the wattage alone, but the thermal design of the tip and heating element.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-11-15, 10:28:

It is not about the wattage alone, but the thermal design of the tip and heating element.

Well said!

Tiido wrote on 2025-11-14, 19:12:

At home I use my no-name 852D+ station, which has been modified to have two soldering irons instead of iron + pump based heatgun. The heatgun is wholly useless to me so I reused its circuitry for second iron. It allows me to have two of mym ost used tips ready and dual wielding is very useful every now and then too ~

I also added an IEC power socket since original power cable was permanetly attached and the outer insulation had gotten so stiff it was broken on both ends... Now there are no problems with that anymore ~

Heh, nice!
That looks very much like my KADA 852D+.
Probably the same China factory that made them.
Very interesting to hear how you converted it to dual irons.
On mine, it's the soldering iron that I almost never use, since it uses very cheap 900M type tips and the heat transfer (and capacity) is very poor. It's one of the least used irons in my fleet. The hot air, though, I did use quite a bit back in the day to reball BGA ram chips and also pull some TSOP components. I even used it to pull a mid-size GPU (Radeon HD5750) from a video card... with the help of a gas stove as the bottom heater, of course. 🤣

That said, my 852D+ wasn't without its problems either. Actually, the weirdest issue about it that I had to fix was to properly convert it for its rated voltage (120V AC). When these stations were still new in the market back in the day, apparently there must have been a shortage, because mine came with a North American (US) 120V plug, but the internal power transformer was rated for 220/230V. With the internal supply voltages only half of what they should be, the station worked (miraculously), but the temperature display showed all kinds of random numbers. And the soldering iron had absolutely zero grunt, since, instead of being capable of outputting 40 Watts, it could only output 10 Watts (half the voltage across a resistive element = 1/4 the power output.) Luckily, I was able to source a very similar internal transformer for free, so I fixed the voltage issue, which in turn fixed both the displays and the power output of the iron. Nevertheless, that didn't help the soldering iron's crappy tips enough to make it useful to me.

BTW, I like you homemade stand/holder. Funny enough, all of my soldering iron stands are exactly like this - down to the part with all of the random pulled parts on them 🤣 - that's how you know someone's workbench is really used and not just for show/decor on videos. 😉

Tiido wrote on 2025-11-14, 19:12:

In any case I love the pots for temperature adjust. I hate all the buttons+menu based things, highly unergonomic...

Agreed.
Though if the iron always starts and is able to maintain a reasonable temperature, then this is less of a problem.
On my CSI 2900, the default temperature is 350C, which is more or less OK. Normally I just hold the down button for 2 seconds to bring it down to 320-330C, as that's almost always enough for my needs (in rare cases, I bring it down to 300 when working on moisture-ingressed/sensitive phenolic boards that like to "pop"). Only when I'm doing MOSFET replacements on video cards or motherboards, I leave it at the default 350C. With the help of a 2nd iron, TO-252 MOSFETs come out pretty easily - much easier and quicker than with hot air, and without needing a bottom heater.

There's actually one more thing that is different in the station, it has a new transformer since original buzzed quite loudly. The new one also gives higher voltages and is able to put about 100W into an iron. But yeah, it is from a time when the T900 based stations were all the rage and better ones were not available or were really stupidly expensive. This one was 200€ range when it was new all those years ago... I have had to change heaters twice now, last ones were very different from what there used to be and I had to actually do full on recalibration (with few extra mods needed) since it seems despite same model number, the heaters evolve still 🤣.

I made that stand in my early teens in carpently class at school. I have had this thing for more than 20 years now 🤣. The desk is cleaned several times a year since a relative mountain of parts builds up on it from all the stuff that gets done on it 🤣. There was a cleanup about a week ago, to make room for the current project that is about halfway through now.

The need to change temperature is definitely reduced if there's some standby function, to preserve the tips but nothing beats "turns a knob for temp I need" aspect ~
Whatever the next station is, it'll have tips with integrated heaters, and because knobs seem to be gone, it'll be something I build myself.