JBC Crackle/rattle sound - SOLVED

[John Coloccia]

This has been driving me nuts for a while now. Every now and then, my JBC station would make a crackling/rattling sound. Scary, huh? Well, I've been through it, all up and down, and I could never see any obvious signs of arcing, so I just let it go. Whatever it was, it just didn't seem particularly dangerous and I figured I would track it down some day. Sometimes, you have to go with your instincts.

They proved pretty accurate this time. I'm soldering along, and the crackle come back...what the hell IS that? I look down and I see some cut leads dancing around whenever I draw a lot of power.

Turns out that if you get some magnetic leads underneath the station, whenever the thing draws more than idle power, it gives off enough of a field to drag around the leads and it makes noise.

So there you go. Can't say I've ever run into this before with any other station, but now it's solved. I'm sure someone else out there must have similar issues. I had been attributing it to some sort of squeak that I just needed to track down. I would have never guessed this! 

[jitter]

The company I work for almost exclusively uses JBC for hand soldering and desoldering (incl. hot air). Both as single stations or two- or three-in-one rework stations.
Apart from the through hole desolder iron, which is adequate, the rest is up there with the best.

I don't recall any of them making weird noises, but should they start to do so, I now know what to look for  .
The noisiest station I know is my hobby-class Solomon SL-20. Each time the heater element switches on or off, there's a quite audible resonating sound.

[neslekkim]

Turns out that if you get some magnetic leads underneath the station, whenever the thing draws more than idle power, it gives off enough of a field to drag around the leads and it makes noise.

I have my DI station standing on an metal grid shelf, and I get some strange sound when it draws power, I thought it was transformer that sings, could you do something to stop it?

[SeanB]

Place a spacer block of wood under it to get it further away from the metal shelf.

[John Coloccia]

Pretty much that's the practical solution. I looked at my Hakko...it sits a little higher off the bench. I'm assuming Wellers do too. It's just this particular station that seems to sit at just the right height that little bits of metal can sneak under there and get caught up in just enough of a field to rattle against each other and the case, making this weird noise. It's enough to drive you nuts because it only happens just as you start soldering and it draws a bunch of current.

Up to this point, I'd assumed that the handle insulation was squeaking somewhere when I moved just right, but I could never reproduce it with the station off. I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out!

[commongrounder]

I had the same thing happen with my old Weller EC2002M base.  It turned out to be some cut component leads that rolled underneath the base and when the iron called for power they would buzz against the bottom.  It was annoying, but at least easy to fix!