Can you buy JBC station guts somewhere?

[RedLion]

Basically what the title says.

I'm planning a project that combines a power supply and a soldering iron controller. It would be aimed towards Slotcar racing and/or RC racing, hence I want it to be one compact unit.

I was thinking tap into the 24V off the mains transformer and put in a control board for a soldering station. The JBC CDB would be perfect since it heats up so insanely quickly, in case of a mid-race repair job. However I haven't found any source for JBC spare parts except for the irons and cartridges. Is there such a place in europe where I could buy the controller on its own?

Ersa will flog you any part of their soldering stations through their own store if you are prepared to pay, they are usually my favoured flavour of hot pointy bits, however they are not the fastest.
One could of course get one of the many, many T12 controllers and irons, none of which are really that great to be honest.

[TheMG]

If you look around, some people have designed DIY, open-source base station controllers for JBC soldering irons. I believe there are schematics, PCB layouts, etc for both the "standard" and the inductive JBC irons (the inductive ones being more complex since they essentially require an RF amplifier to drive the inductive element).

[RedLion]

There are certainly a lot of those, but the question is do they perform as well as the original JBC?
I'm not too familiar with JBC or the open-source community around them, so I couldn't tell if the speed of them is due to the cartridge design itself or the control algorithm they use.
The heating speed and the automatic on/off feature of the holder is after all my main argument.

On another note, if I ever was to make more of these compact PSU/soldering units, which I am not intending to do, but eventually someone may badger me into making another one, I would feel more comfortable if I wasn't copying someone's work.

[tooki]

From what I’ve seen in videos of clones, it’s mostly the cartridge design that makes them good. JBC tips are optimized for performance rather than longevity, so they have quite thin iron plating, so they aren’t as durable. Other brands, like Ersa or Pace, use a thicker iron plating that slightly reduces thermal performance, but makes the tips last longer.

[DavidAlfa]

Jbc clones are terrible, not even close to the worst T12.
What are you expecting to solder?

Cheap T12s are pretty capable, just get the proper tips, i.e. don't even think on soldering thick wires with a thin tip like BL, DL08... get a beefier one, D4, BC3, D52 will do.

[bidrohini]

Have you searched here?
https://www.jbctools.com/