The 907A import soldering irons?

[Jidis]

Hi,

I bought a W.E.P./Yihua 852D+ hot air station years back, mainly for the air. It has the add-on 907A soldering iron, which I wrote off shortly after my first couple fights with it, but I see posts in here with people who seem to be satisfied with it (or one of its clones), so I was trying to figure out why mine sucks.

It's never seemed like it gets hot enough, so I ordered a tip thermometer, and as expected, it's significantly lower than what it's set for. At the higher settings, it can be up to 100°(C) below, and at the lower settings, it won't even melt the standard Kester stuff I've been using. Out of curiosity, I removed the tip, shroud, and nut, and put the raw heating element up against the tester, which seemed to get to the correct temp (unless it's supposed to be higher to account for transfer loss). I was aware that the nut which holds the tip and shroud on is notorious for loosening up, or doesn't get tight enough, so I've been making sure to crank down on that and periodically check it. I even went so far as to lightly grind down the back end of one of the tips to make sure it didn't hit the iron's body before the heating element made it far enough up inside it.

I'm not expecting a high end tool, but it would be convenient to not need to drag out an additional iron sometimes. Is there possibly a way to get mine usable? Is their quality control bad enough that I simply got a dud, and can buy one of the cheap replacement irons or different batch of tips... or mod it? Is there a reasonably priced better iron compatible with this base? Lastly, if I were to grab a replacement iron or tips, is there a particular brand amongst the clones that I'd have better chances with?

Thanks, and sorry for all the text!

George     

[thm_w]

So the tip is a very loose fit on the heater core? If it is then can be the tip and you can try to shim it or get replacement tips.
Heater core regulates to the thermistor on the end of it so that part sounds right.

[Jidis]

Sorry it took me a bit to reply @thm_w . I wasn't thinking anything was going to show up after a while.

Yeah, that's the one thing I didn't bother to check when I checked the heater length. I already knew there was a decent gap, but nothing else here uses that style of tip, so I figured that was OK. I watched some YouTubes over the past couple days with people shimming copper/aluminum in the gap, so I'm going to try to dig up some copper and try that here, but I did see one comment warning that during the expansion, you could squeeze and crack the heating element. I've got no idea how far to push that, but if that's all that's responsible for the issue, I guess it's much tighter on the better quality irons.

One of the things I was wondering was if the heaters are typically somewhat consistent in dimensions, and maybe third party tips would take care of everything. The ones it ships with look like something out of a gumball machine, so I guess I'd be getting better quality plating along with the heat fix if that was a solution.

-Thanks!   

[thm_w]

If you have good digital calipers you can measure. I would expect the ceramic heater to be more consistently accurate, then the tips may be cheaply drilled out so could be off in hole dimension.
This listing says 3.7, 5.05 or 5.5mm: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/323629559488

You can try with just aluminum foil to fill the gap.

It won't be pleasant to use if you need to swap tips, but, at that point I'd spend a few more dollars on a JBC clone instead of new tips:

[Jidis]

Hey again @thm_w ,

I did get to try that the other night with some copper I delaminated from PCB stock. I didn't bother checking with calipers, as I figured I'd just wrap however many layers filled the gap. I think it ended up just needing one, but it was tight enough that I had to twist the tip while sliding it on.

It seemed better, but still didn't get that close to the dial temperature. I didn't mess with it for long though, so I'll try again, maybe even with a different material. I do have two other decent irons, so I don't need to add one. I just wanted to have both in one unit for when I need to drag out the hot air.

Thanks Again