A JBC Soldering Station Non-Repair and Teardown

RE: A JBC Soldering Station Non-Repair and Teardown

shabaz — Sat, 02 Mar 2024 16:06:27 GMT

This setup got me out of the hole while the main soldering station was down.

The particular 12V power supply is (unlike many other models) grounded (model VEC50US12). A higher wattage power supply is recommended though (the supply rail drops on startup when the iron is initially heating up).

The iron is described here: [mention:32db78db68014281a7953ddff7a34cdc:f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07] it comes with a DC barrel plug, which was cut off and replaced with an inline DC barrel socket, so that the power supply could attach to it.

The small 1mm tip (model C210-006) on the iron in the photo is more than sufficient to melt solder on large ground planes, even though a larger tip should be used for that.

The iron stand is pretty basic but OK for light work. There is a pocket for wire wool (I don't use the sponge at all), but for normal work I use a separate pot with a larger amount of wool.

The soldering iron is great, one minor problem is that it's quite easy to accidentally hit a button and adjust the temperature up or down. I have not found it to be a major irritation as of yet.

RE: A JBC Soldering Station Non-Repair and Teardown

shabaz — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 16:54:32 GMT

Problem solved!

I randomly swapped out the 74HC4053 chip (visible to the right of the LCD in the photo above). It wasn't completely random; it was in the measurement path for the temperature determination, so there was a fair chance it could have been that since the op-amp replacement made no difference.

After swapping it out, it actually got worse (the reported temperature leaped to 600+ degrees C! so I quickly switched off, thought some more, and then scrubbed even harder with isopropyl alcohol to clean the area that I'd worked at. Then, it was dried with canned air and heated a bit to evaporate any remaining moisture. After that, all was well.

RE: A JBC Soldering Station Non-Repair and Teardown

DAB — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 19:20:30 GMT

An easy fix is the best fix.

It does look like a well built unit.

RE: A JBC Soldering Station Non-Repair and Teardown

dang74 — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 12:21:57 GMT

I am surprised to see so many discrete three pinned parts. I assume they are transistors. I guess their combined cost was less than the couple of op-amps that probably could have been used instead.

RE: A JBC Soldering Station Non-Repair and Teardown

dougw — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 14:41:25 GMT

The first suspect is always the connector. If there is any intermittent on the power or temperature feedback, the temperature will go crazy.

RE: A JBC Soldering Station Non-Repair and Teardown

Andrew J — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 09:39:07 GMT

I think another lesson is that although they can be expensive to purchase, brands like JBC and their peers are worth shelling out for because quality tells and lasts. Even better, if you don’t have a professional need, buy a second hand one! Hope you find the problem and are able to fix it. I guess with two channels, one of which is working, you could do some comparative fault finding across them. If any part of the circuit is shared you at least know the fault lies downstream of that and it isn’t the actual pluggable iron either.

My first soldering iron was (still is) a fairly cheap Hakko. Works well and I don’t need to change it. If it breaks down I would look for a multi-unit, one that can do hot air as well. I now have a better idea of what I use the individual stations for now: it would be great if there was a unit that did soldering, hot air and hot plate in one base unit.