I have just signed up too add to this topic about the HW100, although I have been watching Dave's videos on youtube for a few years now.
I have recently bought a Pace HW100, and I love it to bits. If your reading this thinking about getting a soldering iron make sure you buy a decent one, non of this chinese monkey metal rubbish. A decent iron has a nice soft rubber wire, and the wand is nice to hold. The tips on chinese ones are made of crap metal which disolves slowly. Also the heating elements are unreliable and prone to failing after just a few hours, I have gone through 4 in less than 6 months.
The Pace HW100 does have its disadvantages and its advantages!
Firstly the temperature setting system works by plugging in the 3.5mm jack setting dongles, these are quite expensive and make sure you buy 3.5mm ones, not 2.5mm ones like I did. You can use a 2.5mm to 3.5mm stereo headphone jack adapter which are a £2 delivered on you favourite auction site.
The soldering tips are actually a cartridge, and are hot swappable. These are about £12 each, and are a brilliant feature as the heating elements get less work as you swap from one to another. They heat up very fast, hold stable temperature, and keep up temperature even under heavy thermal loads.
The base unit is compact, and very well built, it is heavy and proper solid. As is the stand, they are fantastic.
I am very happy with this iron, I was using a friends JBC iron which tempted me into ditching my chinese rubbish. The JBC has a wicked sleep mode function which saves the heating elements and stops the tips from oxidising while in the stand, shame the Pace does not do this.
Further up this topic you will find a list of the temperature setting dongles:-
Soren said:-
500 °F = 260°C Green 205 ohm
550 °F = 287°C Blue 215 ohm
600 °F = 315°C Orange 226 ohm
650 °F = 343°C Yellow 232 ohm
700 °F = 371°C Red 240 ohm
750 °F = 399°C Purple 249 ohm
800 °F = 426°C Black 261 ohm
850 °F = 454°C Silver 274 ohm
This got me thinking, instead of buying more stupid overprice dongles, why not make an adjustable dongle....
So after calculating the rough temperature settings from the resistance, I used a 180 ohm resistor and a 100 ohm potentiometer, and a 3.5mm jack connector. Solder the resistors to connect to the 2 contacts nearest the tip of the 3.5mm jack.
Look at the photos for the build up, its proper simple, even an idiot like me can do it.
What I found from building it though, 180 ohms is too low for the resistor, if you turn it below 190 ohms, the Pace HW100 give a red light and stops heating so it must be below its capable heat range. So I would use either a 190 ohm or 200 ohm configuration if I was building it again.
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