So, TL;DR: Weller US branch moved operations to Mexico, probably laid off all US engineering staff. Weller German offices probably existed prior to this move and continued to exist to be able to sell Weller products to the European market. Their offices there designed new units for the European market, and those were ported to the US market slowly. Eventually someone high up decided to hand the reigns of the US Weller branch more or less fully over to the German branch.
Weller was founded in 1959 in Besigheim, Germany. It never was only an "office". Weller soldering tools were developed and (at least for the european market) manufactured in Besigheim, Germany until 2016, when manufacturing was moved to Mexico and 130 people were laid off. Weller claim that they still develop the soldering tools in Besigheim, Germany.
BTW: my 2014 Weller PU81 was made in Germany and has a 500mA slow blow primary fuse which is user-accessible. I bought another one last year, which was "Made in Mexico".
Sorry, I did not mean to insult Weller's presence in Germany as being in some way inferior to the US-based Weller offices. This is obviously not the case when you look at the significant degree of sophistication of the German-designed units produced in the past 15 years over the state of Weller's product line from ~2000.
That is saddening information about the lay-off.
I would like to point out one thing, though, which is that Weller was originally founded in the United States back in the 1940s. See for example, this marketing bit that I pulled from
the Apex Tool Group website:
![](https://i.imgur.com/WZ2zSBx.jpg)
There is also this text
on their website:
In the soldering industry, the name Weller® carries a lot of weight. Carl Weller patented the first hand-soldering tool to heat and cool rapidly in 1941. Weller Manufacturing Company was founded in 1945 as a family partnership near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Somewhere I have read (though I don't have time to find it now--perhaps later today) that Weller began operations in Germany because it was too difficult for the US offices to alter their products to European electrical safety specs from afar.
Also, copying this from a different thread (where I posted in by accident... whoops)
![](https://i.imgur.com/7frqADx.png)
Going back to my earlier theories about design moving from Weller NA to Weller Germany, just look at the label on this unit... "Designed & Engineered in Germany" then "Made in Mexico." Keep in mind that this is the NA-variant.
What I would really like to know is, are the units which are intended for the European market, like the rest of the European Wellers, made in Germany. If this is the case, I wonder if there are differences in the design. My thought is that perhaps Weller in Germany designed the European version of this unit, then it was "ported" to the US market. And, who might have done that "port?" I wouldn't be surprised if that was a task given to Weller NA who, being apparently now a shell of a company, went the route that they did (i.e., no primary side fuse) without running that past the original designers in Germany.
So, my question would be, (a) where are the 230V units made and (b) do they have better protection?
Of course, paschulke2 seems to have answered the question to part (a), which is that prior to 2016 they would perhaps have been made in Germany, but now in Mexico. I would wonder then if there are differences between the pre/post 2016 versions of these. (if there is a pre-2016 version.)