Pace ADS200 soldering station

[Dyaxxis]

...As alank2 mentioned a few pages back, I hope you match the true temperatures of the irons being compared, as opposed to assuming the set temperatures are correct. Despite having great temperature accuracy, PACE cartridge style tips (as well as JBC, Weller, Hakko, et al) can run hot or cold, depending on the the shape of the tip, it's mass and the positioning of the sensor in the tip. See the attached photo for an example. Note that the PACE tip is reading an accurate temp of 520F, while the JBC Tip is set on 520F yet displaying 557F on the contact pyrometer! Let's compare apples to apples.

Aaron

That's a very valid point Aaron. In regards to the JBC manual, they do have a temp adjustment procedure as well as a notice when changing cartridge types. I actually follow this procedure dependent upon my individual experience to attempt to reduce the variation observed in alank2's pictures (as well as the +5 C difference in Dave's revised video). It is a bit of a hassle, but I'm okay with it.

It's good to see that the ADS 200 (which I have on order  ) can achieve the precise set tip temp right out of the box, as well as having a "Temperature Match" feature. I'd really like to see how AccuDrive works without accessing that feature when changing between significantly different tip types. I'm positive that the ADS will regulate the temp very close to the set temp, but I'll need to wait until Pace offers AccuDrive "specialty tips" to test this feature.

[PACE-Worldwide]

Hi Dave,

Just watched the video, and I think it's a fair and balanced review! Thanks for the revisions!

Aaron

[Dyaxxis]

So they do stack!

Here ya go!

Nice!

What I like about seeing those two units "stacked" with each other has me thinking about this...

For the Pace Worldwide North American web portal, there's a simple comparison I've made:

• 2 ADS 200's with ISB stands could cost roughly 530 USD
• 1 ST 100 without the ISB stands is currently priced at 614.85 USD
• 2 ST 50's with ISB stands could cost roughly 680.80 USD
• 2 WJS 100 without ISB could cost 718.94 USD

Yeah, I know... not really "apples-to-apples" comparison amongst distinct features between all of the units in the list, but it's nice to see how 2 ADS 200's could work out much cheaper than the previous technology units.

[alank2]

Loved the sponge recovery testing Dave!

[labjr]

Hi PACE-Worldwide

Nice work letting the Australian distributors get away with a price of $543AUD ex Tax. Only a mark up of 67%!   
239USD = 325AUD x 1.67 = $543AUD

Really looking out for the users on this forum. 

How strict is Australian customs? Have someone ship you a "used" one with very low miles. 

[labjr]

Loved the sponge recovery testing Dave!

Someone has a job flattening sponges? 

[Cliff Matthews]

Hi PACE-Worldwide

Nice work letting the Australian distributors get away with a price of $543AUD ex Tax. Only a mark up of 67%!   
239USD = 325AUD x 1.67 = $543AUD

Really looking out for the users on this forum. 

How strict is Australian customs? Have someone ship you a "used" one with very low miles. 

..or maybe Jonestronics will have a deal, didn't someone say they currently have an overstock on tips? 

[PACE-Worldwide]

Hi PACE-Worldwide

Nice work letting the Australian distributors get away with a price of $543AUD ex Tax. Only a mark up of 67%!   
239USD = 325AUD x 1.67 = $543AUD

Really looking out for the users on this forum. 

Presjar,

Sorry I missed your entry. Distributor mark-ups are very complicated, especially in Australia and other foreign countries. Mektronics sells the standard ADS200 for $542 Australian dollars which is equivalent to about US$397.  Mektronics must then ship from US to Australia, an extremely expensive endeavor probably costing thousands. Using the cheapest UPS shipping setting on our website will cost you US$250 for one ADS unit! Plus you have to add on duty, taxes, Customs etc. After all is said and done, it wouldn't surprise me if Mektronics made only 20-25% margin on that $542 price. I really don't see it as price gouging.

Aaron

[exe]

How does active rectification work on this station? Does anyone have a schematic?

[Cliff Matthews]

There's a MOSFET bridge.. Marco Reps video mention's it.
*edit - 4 of these: https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/ZXMN4A06G.pdf

[PACE-Worldwide]

There's a MOSFET bridge.. Marco Reps video mention's it.

Cliff is correct.

[exe]

There's a MOSFET bridge.. Marco Reps video mention's it.
*edit - 4 of these: https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/ZXMN4A06G.pdf

But how is it driven? . I wonder if there is something better (=cheaper) than lt4320...

[Gary.M]

There's a good argument here for a serious distributor to bite the bullet and ship a pallet load of them by ocean freight. It is significantly cheaper.

Hi PACE-Worldwide

Nice work letting the Australian distributors get away with a price of $543AUD ex Tax. Only a mark up of 67%!   
239USD = 325AUD x 1.67 = $543AUD

Really looking out for the users on this forum. 

Presjar,

Sorry I missed your entry. Distributor mark-ups are very complicated, especially in Australia and other foreign countries. Mektronics sells the standard ADS200 for $542 Australian dollars which is equivalent to about US$397.  Mektronics must then ship from US to Australia, an extremely expensive endeavor probably costing thousands. Using the cheapest UPS shipping setting on our website will cost you US$250 for one ADS unit! Plus you have to add on duty, taxes, Customs etc. After all is said and done, it wouldn't surprise me if Mektronics made only 20-25% margin on that $542 price. I really don't see it as price gouging.

Aaron

[VK4GHZ]

Hi PACE-Worldwide

Nice work letting the Australian distributors get away with a price of $543AUD ex Tax. Only a mark up of 67%!   
239USD = 325AUD x 1.67 = $543AUD

Really looking out for the users on this forum. 

You can buy the JBC for only $5 more ATM.
This is a discount of 30.8%, and they wouldn't be selling at a loss, so their margins are well north of 30%.

[Alex Eisenhut]

Pretty cool, looks like I'm getting mine tomorrow, with 3 extra freebie tips of my choice. 

Thanks Aaron!

[PACE-Worldwide]

Pretty cool, looks like I'm getting mine tomorrow, with 3 extra freebie tips of my choice. 

Thanks Aaron!

Great ... My understanding is that is was indeed PACE's fault, they ordered the ADS200 with ISB Tool Stand in mid June and just received them yesterday! Accessotronik is really a great group of people to work with.

Aaron

[PACE-Worldwide]

You can buy the JBC for only $5 more ATM.
This is a discount of 30.8%, and they wouldn't be selling at a loss, so their margins are well north of 30%.

That's a pretty amazing price!

[labjr]

I have a feeling we'll be seeing 3rd party firmware and even 3rd party drop-in PCB's for the ADS200.

[EEVblog]

You can buy the JBC for only $5 more ATM.
This is a discount of 30.8%, and they wouldn't be selling at a loss, so their margins are well north of 30%.

Or spot on 30% and they just want to clear them out and not carry it any more?

[knapik]

Dunno about that, a few months ago I saw that the same JBC irons were on sale for about the same price at Mektronics. They seem to have sales for their soldering irons kinda often? I know the fx-951 was on sale pretty recently too.

[nanofrog]

As per EEVBlog's statement of using the lowest temp possible temp POV, I get where he's coming from. Unfortunately however, it's more important to have the temp set where the joint is made properly in 1 -2 seconds without damaging either the component or board IME (minimal dwell time).

I'm not suggesting that You turn down the temp and sacrifice the quality of the joint, I thought that was obvious? (maybe not it seems)

It was actually. 

My comments had to do with keeping such a low temp on the pad/hole so long that the epoxy bond between the FR4 and copper foil broke free, despite the low temp setting. Subsequently allowing an operator, such as myself, to tear pads & traces off the PCB. 

FWIW, this isn't a hypothesis. BTDT and burnt the box of T-shirts. Top quality US made PCB's, so can't blame it on crap boards. Just my shitty skills at that time. 

Worse yet, I missed this fact at first during the beginnings of my first professional job, thus amplifying the probem (process engineering fell under my purview). I was so fortunate that others in the company spotted what was going on and explained to me where I'd gone wrong. Not just by an explanation, but by both demonstration as well as full access to an SEM to show me what was truly going on via cross-sections.  I learned so much at that time.... 

FWIW, the company involved was Martin Marietta, just prior to the transition to Lockheed Martin (I replaced a 42yr. veteran* who quite literally gave his entire professional life to the company = was given the choice to "take it or you get nothing" retirement options). 

I learned so much more than I could ever pass on I expect. Not many of them left, which truly makes me sad (not only great engineers, but some of the best human beings I've ever had the privilege of having known). 

* This may not mean squat to anyone else, but I miss you old man. You went too soon.

[KL27x]

Great video presentation. Well done. But...

I hate these kinds of reviews, because without ever having even used it, one can't possibly know the first thing about how well the thing solders, how well the setback works, how hot the handle gets (when it's actually soldering things and pumping out the watts), or how good is the tip selection. It turns into so much opinion. Unfortunately, you would actually have to have a lot of soldering to do to really get a feel, and most people just don't have that need on a regular basis.

Hilarious the "hi, hi, hi" bit. That is annoying for sure. But you don't look at the display when you are actually soldering. One of my T12 clones flashes random numbers while heating up, and I never held that against it. One of my Hakko clones showed perfectly linear and insanely quick ramp up to the set temp, pretty much flipping through every single degree on the way up. Which was obviously a complete farce. About 10 seconds after it hit the set temp, you might actually be able to melt solder.

[elektropionir]

Hello!

Good video by Dave as usual but I would like to point few things, after waiting for this product to come out for some time now...

1) Comparing ADS-200 with JBC is absolutely fair! In EU JBC is around 380-400 Euro. ADS-200 is 355Euro. I have no idea where this 199$/200e figure comes out but I cannot see those offers anywhere.

2) Iron plating thickness "issue" claim is absolute bullshit unless you are using your soldering iron to dig holes in your garden.
At work, I use JBC iron that is on all the time. I have bunch of tips that are 4-5 years old and they are still in good condition despite heavy use. I have large size tips that I use to burn trough litz wire insulation or trough Triple insulated wire all the time. I often apply a lot of pressure to push the thick trafo pins out of large copper surfaces and so far I have not damaged or destroyed a single tip.
I would expect similar lifetimes from both JBC and Pace.

2.5) JBC tips are affordable. They are already between  20-30 euro, however there are constant offers from suppliers, as well as different shops on ebay in EU that offer them for under 20Euro.

3) The PCB design in ADS200 looks quite bad. Using outdated micro-controllers and external ADC is amateurish from a company designing mass produced product that is very cost sensitive. To me this is pure incompetence. "No calibration" feature is just a marketing BS. I am sorry for being harsh, but hardware "particularities" are obvious in software as well, with temperatures jumping up and down all the time... To me, there is no excuse for this. Soldering station is a simple product, and today there are countless fast and cheap u-Controllers on the market that could eat anything you throw at it. JBCs are using dsPICs and they have usb interface, and you can get stm32s for pennies today...

3.1) 7segment displays with two buttons, i feel this type of user interface was outdated in the 1980s.

4) Handles... I like the handle design but "improving" or claiming indestructibility, or implying that competition's product is feeble and just falls apart is nonsense. JBC handles are very strong and thin. They also offer different grips you can attach and I find them quite comfortable.

Anyways, I am a little bit disappointed by this product, from a reputable company. It would do the job, but it just does not look like a well developed product.
Presently JBC is a better offer for money at least in EU.

Furthermore,

Someone mentioned using wide-range SMPS in soldering stations. I believe companies that produce soldering stations are not up to such challenge. While it is possible, and they could blow any current product out of the field in terms of speed of response, and temperature stability and controllability, they would have to deal with very complicated EMC and safety standards, and most likely they would not do it well.
Furthermore, they would have to change their temperature control method (it would become very complicated), because SMPS do not like high AC loads. Output caps would suffer and limit the lifetime of device drastically. It is far from impossible, but many fail at simple 50Hz-Triac method that current controlled SMPS would be like asking for a space-x rocket from a corner store bakery.
50Hz trafo is a very reasonable approach, simple because it is robust, safe and cheap.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

3) The PCB design in ADS200 looks quite bad. Using outdated micro-controllers and external ADC is amateurish from a company designing mass produced product that is very cost sensitive. To me this is pure incompetence. "No calibration" feature is just a marketing BS. I am sorry for being harsh, but hardware "particularities" are obvious in software as well, with temperatures jumping up and down all the time... To me, there is no excuse for this. Soldering station is a simple product, and today there are countless fast and cheap u-Controllers on the market that could eat anything you throw at it. JBCs are using dsPICs and they have usb interface, and you can get stm32s for pennies today...

3.1) 7segment displays with two buttons, i feel this type of user interface was outdated in the 1980s.

I don't know who you are, but I like you already. I feel the same way. It's a soldering iron. You can write a dead-easy round robin program to monitor keypresses, process input information, set display, set force values, and it would all fit into maybe 3K. The PCB design looks ... unskilled. Definitely someone on their first few PCBs ever.

Then again, large companies that make toaster ovens also can't seem to debounce rotary selector switches correctly, companies that make microwave ovens can't make a reliable keypad, washing machines that flash error codes that aren't in the manual, etc...

[Shock]

Comparing ADS-200 with JBC is absolutely fair! In EU JBC is around 380-400 Euro. ADS-200 is 355Euro. I have no idea where this 199$/200e figure comes out but I cannot see those offers anywhere.

It's supposed to be 225 euro list price for the 230V standard model. Dealers are possibly just listing it for whatever price they want to at the moment. Noone was even comparing it to a JBC anyway just the power spec is similar. Dave took that from this thread (that Cliff made up) and ran with it on his video. Cliff could have wrote Apple iWatch killer for all the difference it makes.