Hello EEVBlog,
First time poster here. I thought I would kick off with a teardown for you guys.
Ive been looking around to get a new soldering station for the past couple of weeks. Ive come by this brand which I didnt have any info on previously. Appearently they were pretty reputable brand till something went wrong down the line and they've lost their reputation partly.. (I may be wrong about this, but this is what Ive read on various web sources.)
Anyway, I know all about Wellers, Hakkos and other well regarded brands but I cannot get Hakko where I live, and Wellers are incredibly overpriced here relative to other places. Ive used the "good" of the semi crap clone stuff before which kind of stuck with me for 8-9 years, but it was time to make a change.
There seems to be very limited amount of reviews on this XYtronic brand soldering stations on the web. I chose a model, based on power output, tip availability and price. So I bit the bullet, and got this LF-1600 80W soldering station from XYTronic - made in Taiwan.
First impressions:
The main unit:
Well, its a compact unit with a very small footprint. Actually smaller than I first anticipated.
This is a transformer powered unit with an aluminum chassis with plastic top cover for LCD display. The readout is nice, bright and clear. The adjustment buttons are tact switches and they are very responsive. There is a regular on/off button on the front along with pen connection. The unit is hefty, it has a nice weight to it so its not gonna tumble down your workstation.
There is screws with locking washers all over it - top to bottom. Its solid. No cracking, no rattling.
Every component inside is screwed down securely. The transformer is bolted down from 2 sides with machine screws. The chassis, power jack, backside ESD wrist strap connection, transformer and pen tip cables are all grounded using crimped wires and machine screws. All grounding posts are marked with green paint. The grounding resistance from pen tip to power jack is around 0,45 Ohms.
The control board is held securely with 4 angled screws. PCB connections are securely held in place with good quality connection sockets, shrinked and crimped connection points. All wires are color coded. (Neutral, Line, Pos, Neg, Sensors)
The power cord supplied is hefty featuring at least 3x1.5mm wires with reasonably supple outer insulation.
The power jack on the unit is held on with hot glue as far as I can tell. Its secure with no play but still a proper screw thru jack would have been nicer. This is the only dodgy solution I came across on this product. Not critical but still.. eeehh.. *** correction: the power jack is push thru clip secured type, the hot glue is just redundancy. ***
The control board is nicely laid out single sided PCB with a nice layout. No stray electrolytic caps hanging around. All SMD parts are nicely soldered with perfect alignment, including the tact swithes on the otherside of the board. There is some slight evidence of hand soldering of some components, as there is a very slight amount of flux residue on the PCB but nonetheless, all solder points are clean and tight. The PCB looks much cleaner in person, as I upped the sharpness on the photos.
The Soldering Pen:
The pen is minimalist, with some nice thin construction. Its light and very maneuverable. The grip is of a high quality rubber anti-slip. The tip guard easily screws - unscrews. The heater is of ceramic type. The body of the iron is solid with no radial play. Its cable is supple enough, thin and long enough. 1,25 meters from main unit to the tip when extended. The tips I had ordered with the iron are of high quality. I cannot comment on their life span yet, but at least they are cheap, bears the imprint of XY brand and widely available.
The Holder:
The holder is heavy, solid and dense plastic construcion with 4 rubber standoffs. It doesnt slide around, period. The pen firmly sits in its place with no play. The tip guard is 3mm steel piano wire like material. solid enough. It can also be removed for easier cleaning of the holder. It comes with soldering metal shavings for tip cleaning, but no extra cleaning sponge. The metal shaving ball is not fluxed on arrival, so I recommend brushing some liquid flux on it prior to use.
Heating Time:
From cold start:
20*C - 200*C around 9 seconds indicated.
20*C - 350*C around 23 seconds indicated.
1mm wide 60/40 solder will start melting around 18 seconds on the wide chisel tip.
Tip actual temp is 20*C-300*C is under 50 seconds. Its not a world record I know but satisfactory for my personal needs.
Tip actual temp at 350*C indicated is spot on when verified with Fluke 87-5 temp probe.
Well this is all I got at this point. Im sorry if I missed anything.
I will follow up here in time, if something goes wrong or anyone raises a question - I will try my best to pass on my humble opinions.
Thank you,
Erol.