@Vince
In the German ebay ads there is a brand new and unused Metcal PS-900 available. Price is VB (Verhandlungsbereit - ready for negotiations).
This station costs around 217 Euro if bought at Farnell, so perhaps the seller (has a female name) will sell it for 150 Euro or so. (as always: NAWTS)
If you are interested, drop me an email a PM and I can try to get it for you.
.oO(why can't people be arsed to use landscape for such pictures instead of portrait?)
THanks BU ! But I think I will pass. Am a shoe string budget now that I am job less. As of last friday I got mylast check and am now officially, 100% out of the company (and the better for it ! ). So I need to count the beans to make tyhat last check last as long as possible...
Since my present Weller does that job for now, I can't justify spending even if just 150 Euros on a new one...
Plus, as you said it's not that expensive brand new ! So I would rather pay a little more for a new one and have the arranty and the like of Farnel to talk to ni case of problems, rather than some private individual, especially not in my home country.
Plus, of course... I need to pay for the materials to keep going on construction work in my house and garage build soon hopefully...
So spendings for the lab will be kept to a minimum for a few months at least.
OK I know, I spent 300 Euros to get the Tek 575 curve tracer but... well you understand, had no choice, I just could not let it pass !
But for "scheduled" gear purchases, I have control over things and... no metcal for me now, neither used or new.
But when I do get one it will be new I think, as it's MUCH cheaper than I thought !
As you said PS 900 is 217 Euros from Farnell ( just looked as well), so 260 all in. I thought it would be around 750 or something !
260 is insane, no point getting a Thermotronics unless they can demonstrate a useful and significant added value.
The PS 900 is 60 "RF" watts, that's 20% more than the most powerful Thermotronics ( 50W ) yet cheaper !
No wonder it can solder anything BD throw at it...
And the base station comes with a nice molded aluminium case as well, no shitty plastic.
The "auto-sleep" stand for sure I will get.. as it's readily available from Farnell or anywehre, for only 35 euros ?! No reason to procrastinate !
And the PS-900 is even supplied with the 1.5mm chisel tip that's so versatile from everything you say, rather the useless conical tip most irons come with. I agree, same experience, conical is shit, useless, chisel much better and versatile.
OK so that's cool, the soldering iron upgrade is now all sorted, just need to pull the trigger once I get a new job.
Iron sorted, tweezers sorted. lab V2.0 is getting into shape bit after bit