I decided that it was time to upgrade my soldering station from my Aoyue 937 station (a good little unit mind you).
I was torn between the Hakko FX-888 or this JBC DIT station with C245 hand piece. I was feeling a bit flush, so I ended up getting the JBC. The idea being that I won't have to upgrade again for a long time if I got the JBC.
The box arrived today. It being rather larger than I thought.
It was very well packaged, bordering on extreme perhaps. I was immediately impressed by the fact that it is supplied with the correct mains lead for this country.
Rear of the control unit.
So, before we switch it on, let's take the back off of it!
PCB behind the front panel and LCD.
Rear PCB.
USB connector.
Power input connections.
The stand connects to the control unit via a cable about 500cm long. Then the hand piece connects underneath the stand.
So, upon power up, it enters sleep mode and heats the tip to 180 degrees in a few seconds.
When you remove the hand piece from the stand it reaches 350 degrees in 2 seconds. It may overshoot by about 2 or 3 degrees. Nothing to cry about really as it recovers almost instantly.
If you leave the hand piece in the stand for more than 30 minutes then the power is cut off to the tip altogether.
The cable between the control unit and the stand runs down the back of the bench and is plenty long enough for me to adopt split level positioning of the components to save bench space. Yet, the cable for the hand piece still originates from the stand so there are no wires dangling down from the shelf. I can even pull the stand forward if I like and the control unit cable is long enough.
The soldering stand is nice and heavy (1.3Kg) with good rubber feet. The cleaning station weighs 860g and does not move at all when you poke the iron around at it. Although it has a fan it's not very loud, and you won't hear it at all if Dave and Chris are jabbering away in the background
I applied some solder to the tab of a TO220 package and it heated it quickly without a hint of undershoot while the power meter on the control unit was registering only 20%. If I had a bigger tip more suitable for TO220 tabs for instance, I'd have got better performance . The 50W C245 hand piece very light and comfortable to use. It's cable is very flexible and surprisingly thin. The springy cable management thingy keeps the cable out of the way, but I didn't feel much resistance from it when the cable between it and the hand piece reached it's limit. There is enough cable to adjust to suit anyway.
I am very impressed with this station, well I'd want to be at that price!