There is no hardware difference between Mk1 and Mk2 stations other than the color of the front panel. (The station firmware doesn’t even say Mk2 on the display.) They are completely forwards and backwards compatible with the handpieces. (Ersa says this, but I have tested it: the regular (not nano) iTool Mk1 and Mk2 handpieces both work perfectly on both Mk1 and Mk2 stations. They show up on the screen as simply iTool.) I assume this is the case with the nano, too, but I have no way to test it.
Good to know in case I come across a cheap "old stock" Mk1 Nano, or a used one.
I personally prefer the original front panel; the Mk2 appears "cheaper" made, and I don't understand why they even kept the up/down buttons black -almost like they wanted to camouflage them.
I prefer the silver fronts, too, but in the end it makes no functional difference whatsoever.
I would definitely go for the Mk2 because the bayonet-lock tips (series 142) are much easier to switch than the screw-lock series 102, and additionally, they are actually cheaper! With the 102, you really have to spend another 6 euro to buy a collar for each tip, so the price of a tip is really its retail price plus 6 euro. The 142 tips have the locking collar permanently attached, but perversely, often cost a bit less than the 102 tip (without the collar!!).
Strange, but good to know about running usage costs like that.
Who knows how that came to be. Bear in mind that I was looking at retail prices, not the wholesale prices, so we don't know whether the discrepancy is Ersa's fault or not.
At the same time it's frustrating that companies don't standardize on things like this and go for one series for all their soldering irons.
Let's not be ridiculous. Ersa introduced the 102 series tips with the original i-Con station in 2006 or 2007, and used it across the entire series until late 2021, when the i-Con trace (a weird, special station for production) introduced the 142 series. In July of last year, they upgraded the rest of the i-Con line to Mk2, which switched them all to series 142. I do not consider 18-19 years of tip consistency to be non-"standardized"!
With that in mind, are the newer 142 series likely to "take over" and thus become easier to get hold of, and eventually the series 102 will become obsolete and gone? Or is there already such a big market for 102 series tips that these will continue to be sold?
How is this a question?!? Series 142 replaces series 102, in that the Mk2 models
replace the Mk1 models. It's not as though Ersa is keeping Mk1 for sale alongside Mk2. (Other than as spare parts.) Given Ersa's history, and
18 years' worth of existing Mk1 stations, I expect 102 tips to be widely available for many years to come. But there's no reason to start out now with 102, since it has no advantages over 142.
You cannot mix tip generations; a Mk2 handpiece must use 142 tips, a Mk1 handpiece must use 102 tips.
So the decision between the original and Mk2 model of the Ersa Nano comes down to which handpiece I choose. And that again comes down to which tip-series I want to go for.
Right. But as I said, there is zero reason to begin with 102 tips now. The only reason to get a Mk1 handpiece now is if you already had a big collection of 102 tips. For someone starting out fresh, it makes no sense to go with 102.
The i-Con nano does not have a backlight, which actually annoys me enough at home that I added my own backlight to it. This, and the rear-mounted power switch, annoy me just enough that in retrospect, I wish I’d just bought an i-Con 1 instead. (I also prefer the rotary encoder for setting temperature rather than buttons, but that’s a matter of taste.)
Irritating about the missing backlight.
How did you add a backlight to it?
I installed some 3mm white LEDs with series resistors to side-light the LCD. Because it was still under warranty at the time -- and because I didn't have another soldering station handy anyway -- I just press-fit the wires into some convenient vias or something. It's not super bright. I should probably redo it now that the warranty is over, soldered in with brighter LEDs, or maybe I can even find a backlight module that would fit.
Is it a matter of just opening it up, disconnecting the existing LCD's cable and attach a new pin-pin compatible LCD which does have a built-in backlight?
The LCD in the nano/pico is a custom LCD, with pins, soldered into the PCB. There is no such thing as a pin-compatible replacement. (I vaguely recall that maybe there were even PCB pads for a backlight. It's possible they envisioned it but then left it out.)
I suppose it's more of an irritation the more frequently you use it, but for occasional hobby use it's probably OK (even though I'm sure the manufacturer could easily have solved both issues without much increase in cost).
I looked up the Ersa i-Con 1 (Mk2) and compared to the Nano (Mk2) the price difference here is around 150 Euros and it's probably not justifiable (in my case) to pay the extra cost.
It is if it sits in a place where it is brightly lit. In my case, it's under a little shelf, so kinda annoying. One of the downsides to the non-backlit display is that it's REALLY easy to leave it on by mistake.
I bought my nano as a hobbyist for infrequent use, but now, 10 years later, I wish I'd just gotten the bigger one. Over the 20+ years I'll probably own it, an extra 150 euros works out to, like, 7 euros per year.
On the other hand I understand that the i-Con 1 can have other tools attached to it, than just the soldering iron, right?
No. The i-Con 1 (Mk1 and Mk2) and i-Con 2 (never sold as Mk2) work
only with the standard i-Tool Mk1 and i-Tool Mk2 handpieces. It does NOT support tweezers or anything else.
i-Con 1V and 2V stations (and the original 2006/2007 i-Con station that had no numbers at all) support tweezers as well as a number of older handpieces the Ersa catalog no longer lists.
The i-Con Vario stations support additional tools like hot air and vacuum, but one has to shop VERY carefully for the station model with the integrated air and/or vacuum pumps one needs.
A few months ago, I posted an overview of compatibility, with various Ersa compatibility tables (from different years) that, combined, give the complete compatibility:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/ersa-desoldering-station/msg5472376/#msg5472376Note that (other than as a spare part), Ersa no longer sells the external vacuum pump that was previously used to give desoldering iron ("X-tool") compatibility with non-Vario stations. That's why the X-tools are no longer listed as compatible, even though they sort-of are.
Note that I am not a big fan of Ersa's desoldering tools, even though the current one has really high power. I don't like the way the vacuum is generated, I don't care for the shape, but more importantly, the selection of desoldering tips is small and VERY expensive, and the consumable filters are extremely expensive. (I chose Pace at home, and at work I have an old Weller that also works well. I've also used Den-On, which is excellent but $$$. The big brands whose desoldering tools I've never used are Metcal, JBC and Hakko.)
I've always struggled with desoldering, but all I can find for the i-Con 1 Mk2 are "desoldering tweezers". Not sure if that's for some special purposes....
Desoldering tweezers are for desoldering SMD components with two rows of pins/pads, like chip resistors and capacitors, SOICs, SOTs, and D-Paks. Some tweezers even have tips to desolder square components like QPFs.
I have desoldering tweezers at work (on an older Pace station), and only very rarely use them. Super handy for some situations, but unless you do frequent SMD repairs professionally, I would not spend the money for them. Even at work, if I only need to desolder a chip resistor or two, I'll just do it with a blob of solder on the iron, or I'll pull out the second normal i-Tool iron and use one iron in each hand. Only if I have a bunch of them, or larger things like the SOICs, will I pull the Pace out of the cabinet.
For hobby use, I would much, much sooner invest in a cheap hot air station, which is a far more versatile tool than desoldering tweezers, and a tool where quality isn't nearly as critical since hot air is inherently imprecise. I have a cheap "858" style hot air station at home and it works well.
Maybe, with a quality soldering solution (i.e. Ersa Nano Mk2) and suitable tips, even desoldering with a cheap desoldering pump will do wonders compared to now!
A cheap desoldering pump belongs in the trash. Especially if you're going to rely on a manual desoldering pump, then it should be a good one. The Edsyn Soldapullt series is often considered the gold standard. Their main models are quite large, which gives them a lot of suction, but cannot be re-armed with your thumb (people press the plunger against the table or their thigh). Another favorite is the Engineer SS-20, which is a tiny little thing that easily fits in one hand, so not a huge volume of air, but with a silicone tip (a short length of silicone hose) that gives it better control over where its suction is applied. That's the one I used until I got a vacuum desoldering system at home. I suspect that any desoldering pump could be improved by adding a short length of silicone hose to its tip. An Edsyn + silicone tube might be the killer combination.
I see that there are many replacement tips available (within both 142- and 102-series), but little information available on which tip is suited for which task.
Most of my soldering consists of through-hole components, small wires and connectors and desoldering through-hole components.
And for some current project ideas I may need to solder SMD ICs for the first time.
I've always thought the idea was to use a thin pencil-point soldering tip, but maybe it would be better to exchange tips according to task instead of a "one tip for everything" solution -especially if I upgrade from a simple soldering iron to my first soldering station!
As you can see from my minor disagreement with wraper in this thread, a significant part of tip choice is personal preference. With that said, I (and many others) do not understand why anyone uses pencil tips; they're not better at
anything. I suspect many companies include them with their irons because they're cheap to make. Ersa includes a much more sensible 1.6mm chisel tip with every i-Tool handpiece. That's a great everyday tip. Tips with one (or more) flat sides just give you more surface with which to make good thermal contact.
When I got my new i-Con 2V at work, I was allowed to get a bunch of tips, so I got a selection of about 20 different ones. I chose them with the full knowledge that most of them will not be used frequently, with the vast majority of jobs done with just a few. Those have been the 2.4mm stubby ("asymmetrical") chisel, the 4.6mm stubby chisel, the 0.8mm stubby chisel, the 1.6mm chisel, and the PLCC blade (which is a supe-versatile tip). Of those, the 2.4mm and 4.6mm stubby chisels, and the 1.6mm standard chisel, are by far the ones I use the most. But depending on the job, I definitely use the other tips! For example, I have used the 10mm chisel for quickly soldering big, heavy banana connectors, and the 0.4mm chisel to get into tiny spaces to tidy up a single SMD pin.
(That's something that's nice about modern, high-power handpieces like the i-Tool: despite being small, they can accept quite large tips and heat them. So one handpiece is very versatile.)
If I had been under a tighter budget constraint, I would have left out a number of intermediate tip sizes. For a hobbyist, I would certainly not get a huge collection in advance. Start with the basics and then add more as you encounter situations that proved challenging.
What will be new to you, if you're coming from a basic soldering iron, is the ability to quickly change tips, even while the iron is hot. (Turn off the station before switching tips! If, for whatever reason, you start to put another, cold tip onto the heater and don't finish it quickly, the heater can very quickly overheat and potentially fail. Better to just flip it off, put on the other tip, and then switch back on. It takes only seconds to heat up.) So you no longer need to think about a "one size fits all" tip for the job, but rather match the tip to the joint. At home with my nano, I'll try to do all the similar joints on a board before switching tips to do all of a different group of similar joints. At work, I have two handpieces but normally keep only one connected. But if I know a job will have different joints that need different tips, I will connect the second handpiece so I can easily switch between them.
I know that Elfa-Distrelec fundamentally sells Ersa, and may be able to order a station for you. They have 142 series tips in stock at reasonable prices.
Elfa-Distrelec are generally considered expensive, and sell mostly to the professional market (which probably explains the not-so competitive prices, but then again most of this stuff isn't commonly available anyway).
But their prices for Ersa aren't particularly expensive, and my main point was that they have the 142 tips (the only real consumable with a soldering iron), and have them at a decent price. Who cares who they "mostly" sell to? You only care whether they will sell a particular item to you.
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