Hi, we have a problem I needed an extra soul during I and the other day and of course the labs not completely set up yet so the solder in bench and solder in rooms not completely set up. So I reached into one of my boxes that has all my solder in gear in it from the old lab and I went oh yeah, this well or do I just plug that in. just need something quick and it started flashing on the screen and I thought oh, that's kind of weird. like something's going on is there you know, a contact thing with the iron probe or something and in the couple of seconds it took me to process that, What? Wha? smoke started billowing and I'm talking like this.

why'd it just started billowing right out the bottom of this poor old well er soldering station here and then I Quickly remembered. oops, it is a 120 volt version and of course we've got 240 volts here in Australia So yeah, I wish this was Smellivision because if you could smell this, yeah, it's got that magic smoke smell. all the magic smoke escape from this thing. So I thought we'd take it apart and I may not be able to repair it.

but yeah, oops. and I think almost every soldering iron on the market is Light uses a transformer based system. They are a fixed voltage, but some of them might have a voltage tap that you could change or something like that, but none of them that I'm aware of anyway offhand. um, use a switch mode converter to get like a universal input mains voltage.

And that's probably because I would guess that they really, you know, we've got like a large power heater, like a 50 watt or a hundred watt heater, switching off and on rapidly and stuff like that. And switching a load like that, a 50 or 100 watt load isn't great for like a switch mode power supply, so it's probably just easier and better performance just to use a transformer. And of course, it gives the thing a bit of heft. So there's nothing wrong with the well.

er, it was a Peb CAC it was me. So let's crack this thing open and see what damage we've done. But by the amount of smoke that escaped from this thing, oh, it's not pretty. And of course, the active ingredient inside all electronic components, including transformers and everything else, is the magic smoke.

And once the magic smoke escapes, doesn't work anymore. Damn it. And of course, I've done a previous teardown video on this thing. so let's have a look.

Nothing obvious on the well. There's nothing obvious at all that's terribly disappointing. Isn't it not? Oh god that smell is. Look.

that smell is horrible. Anyway, I can't see. let's check. Let's get the board out and have a look on there because it did all waft out this front vent this bottom vent here and the smoke was like it must have like filled up all in here and then the pressure of it just like pushed it all out and and billowed in a big wide billow of smoke coming out.

So all right, let's have a look. Wow I'm not seeing anything. see any blow holes or anything like that? What's what's going on? Ah, this is incredibly disappointing. Where is the magic smoke escape from? There's only one electrolytic cap in here which is a non vented one.

It doesn't have the like, the little you know marks on there, the vent marks, the score marks. so that must be one of those solid electrolyte caps. Yep. I'm just absolutely stunned that nothing is blown on here.

So I can only presume that must have come out of the transformer was awful amount of smoke and it came out within like two three seconds it started billowing out of this thing and it was a ton of smoke. was unbelievable and of course Eight. let's just you know, reflex reaction pulled the mains cord at the back of the thing and and then I actually what I did is I Actually once I made sure it wasn't physically alight. I actually shoved it in a box to stop the all smoke billowing out.

but there's nothing wrong with that main board. They're like the power training here was blowing you big to see like a big blow hole in it or something like that. But yep, I can only presume that the smoke came out of the transformer. and sure enough, if I actually smell that board, there's like no sign of it whatsoever.

So yeah I think that is just hunky-dory must have all come out of the transformer. And sure enough, if you smell the transformer yeah that's where the that's where the magic smoke escape from. So I can only presume that it like burnt the enamel off the wires once that amount of smoke escapes from something like a transformer. even if it even if I powered this up again and it worked I wouldn't trust it because that smoke came.

it must have come from the you know the the laminated wires on there so that just breaks down the insulation. Yeah not a good thing. so I would I would not trust that and reuse it even if it worked after a smoking overload like this. And you can see that this does have both fuse and police which protection.

but unfortunately this is only on the secondary side of the transformer. Here you can see over here this is a hundred and twenty volt, a fixed hundred and twenty volt transformer so you can't like. Just choose another tap and convert these from 120 into 240. There's the mains input, go straight through the switch straight into the primary side of the transformer there.

So yeah that's where it must have smoked on the primary side. So let's just measure some stuff here. the secondary side of the transformer. it expect it to be like, you know, an Ohm sub, an ohm, something like that bugger.

all nor point three. Ohms. Yep, something like that. That's fine is our fusing tact.

So our fuse did blow by the looks of it. Yep, dope. That protected that, no worries. And then a poly switch.

Yeah, there. Yet There we go. So that's low. but that fuse has blown so it looks like that protected the secondary side of it.

Hence why we don't You know? Yeah, Well, there's no visible signs of damage. Doesn't mean we do. You know it doesn't mean that this thing is not damaged. You know you'd have to pair it up with some AC here and do it that way.

but we've got another fuse on there. Let's measure that baby. There we go. that fuse is intact.

So yep, that's fine. So and this design is quite good from a secondary side protection point of view. so at board, but unfortunately there's just nothing on the primary side. The primary site is not fused at all and I assume that's legal because well, wouldn't do otherwise.

I Assume it's legal in might vary in other countries, but there's no fusing at all. I Don't think I actually mentioned that in my review at all of this thing and teardown previously, but now it's it's It's obvious there is no primary side fusing and they should at least have an integrated fuse with the holder and that probably would have thought should have if you sized the fuse correctly. Should have at least you know, stopped it. But anyway, let's measure the primary sykes.

I'm pretty sure that's where the magic scope smoke escaped from. And of course, primary side are transformers you'd expect. like, you know, tens of Ohms, hundreds of Ohms, that kind of thing. but what won't? 1.2 Ohms Yeah, that's a lot.

Get your calculator out I'll leave that for an experiment from home. But like point to Ohms calculate 240 or 110 volts across Point 2 Ohms. How much power is that? Bueller Bueller? So obviously what's happening side there is. There's going to be some enamel burnt off the insulation inside there, so it might be time for a teardown of that.

And for those who want to see, let's compare it with a rip off hey Co. FX But of course the primary side transformer will be in the tens or hundreds of Ohms category. And there we go. 64 Ohms.

By the way, these rip off Hakko live stream video assembling that gigatron board and it was just utter trash. So we can get these caps off here. There are this sort of oh yeah, oh hello, hello, oh poor Prom primary side transformer and you can tell it's the primary side. By the way, for those who don't know the secondary side in a step-down transformer which is most products, the secondary side is going to have thicker wire in there because it's like it's stepping down so higher current.

Where is the That's fantastic. Oh there we go. that's more spectacular than A and a component than a blowhole. you know, like output transistor isn't it? Wow look at all the yep, all the enamels burn off that anyway.

thinner wire on the primary side Wow No wonder it's shorted. Look at that. So that's what happens when you apply like 240 volts to a hundred and ten volt transformer and this could have been prevented if they had a fuse because this thing could have like you know could have caught on fire. Imagine if I turned it on and then like walked away and didn't realize and went to the bathroom or something and you know this thing could have like complete like that would have been 240 volts just delivering pumping the power into this thing.

but my mains fuse did actually eventually blow I'm not sure how long after it actually blew, but anyway, you know you could maybe fix it by but you'd have to rewind the whole damn thing and that's just like it's silly. Anyway, if you haven't seen transformer construction before, this is what's called an E Core transformer. It gets its name from the shape of the laminations. These are the laminations.

You can see all the different and you know count how many laminations are in there. Anyway, it gets its name from the shape of the lamination in this case, you can't see it. but there's another part of this court. this laminate.

You can see. it's broken there and there. It goes around like that like a C but it's actually got a center one that goes through. So it's actually it's shaped like an E the letter e.

So it's like e and I it's called and that you can see that they just world the eye part on to the 'part there. So that's how and there's just the center lamination goes through like that. and then they wind the primary in the secondary in separate plastic enclosures like this. and they have the electrical separation.

So that's the electrical isolation between your primary and just secondary here. So yeah, that's a typical for a mains transformer. Wonder if there's anything on the bottom? Let's get that out of there. Oh yeah, yep.

just as crusty on the bottom as it is on the top or the top. This is the top. Yes, sorry all the poor enamel coated wire. so that was the that's the smelling this thing is the burnt enamel.

and Wow you can just yeah, they could just turns into this brown. Really? I don't I don't know if I've actually seen that and like burnt in turn to that extent before. I Seem like little you know blow holes in transformers and stuff like that, but this one is like completely like consistently burnt. The secondary side is also as of course completely intact and of course we would have got initially.

we would have got double the voltage out of, but you know the fuse probably kicked in. or maybe at no it did actually because I said there was something on the LCD because it actually flashed something on the LCD I can't remember what it was. it was just a couple of characters or so. it looked like the processor was actually working it.

then. yeah, panic set in and I pulled the mains plug. So yeah, but isn't that terrific? I Love it. So let that be a lesson to you: don't plug to 14 volts into 110.

And yes, I should have labeled this I know it's labeled on the bottom, but I should have put a huge label on the top of the unit. stupid me, lazy me didn't do that. But of course for these circumstances where I just needed an extra iron somewhere, you know I'm gonna pick up just any you know, random iron that's sitting around. So yeah, I did know like I did know this I was just too lazy to do it and I she'll be right Oh remember that it's 110.

So yeah, I was a peg kak don't do that and I know what you think and Dave does. The control will still work all right. Well let's find out. as per the labeling on here: 120 volt Primary 23 Volt Secondary 60 Hertz Infants should be fine 50 or 60 I can generate that with my episode pulse generator here 23 volts Secondary 60 Hertz So let's plug that in and see what's what.

We're probably going to get some like drops on these leads and stuff like that, especially if you use the heater. But I've got the heater unplugged. so hey, hello, there you go. LCD Works.

Let's plug the iron in. Yeah, it's happy with that. It's set for 270. We'll just leave it at that.

That's fine. it's not going anywhere. Oh, it's dropped. Er.

yeah. 15 up there. Say yeah, we're getting some loss in the leads. Didn't normally tell you hey, it's going up.

Did it normally take that long to start up? Anyway, that's looking good. Yeah, that's looking good. She's heating up, not going to touch and I'm going to assume that the thermocouple in the tip is still good and that it should. You can see it's delivering power.

That's what the little little lightning bolt icon there is. and will it get to when we get to 270? Should maybe start to be able to melt? Say yep, there you go, it's melting solder. Will it actually get this to 70 and regulate? Yep. Yep.

no problem. The little icon thing is flashing off and aren't there. You go. Works.

A treat we don't. Winner chicken dinner good on you. Well, it's obviously a like a robust designed secondary. The fuse did its job on The transformer here kicked in, but obviously like the power training, everything else was robust enough to survive.

Double volts on the secondary nice and well. I've got to ask like how did this actually happen because you plug in 240 volts into a 110 volt transformer? double the voltage on the output. Of course that means for a resistive like element load that we've got here roughly like that's going to be four times the power. So okay, it's going to be delivering four times the power.

but surely like, this thing started smoking literally like two or three seconds after I plugged it in. So even if it liked it because it would have probably started applying power to the heating element straight away. So how it was able to just like completely melt the insulation like that after a couple of seconds at four times the power? I Don't know. Is it a transformer design issue? Of course it should be fused I Reckon that's a that's a bad mistake.

There is not having the primary side transformer fused, especially when it could be quite common to play. You know, to sell these things in different regions that are different voltages. It's not like, oh, you got to suddenly plug a 240 volt iron into 600 volts mains or something like that. You know that doesn't really exist.

That's not gonna happen, but accidentally plug in a 115 or 120 into a 240? That's certainly possible. so certainly should be fuse worthy. But is there not enough enamel insulation on the primary side? Is it a poor design transformer? I Don't know, but jeez like wouldn't have expected that really. Oopsie if you liked the video.

yeah my screw up. Give it a thumbs up because that always helps a lot. And discuss down below you got like photos or anything of stuff that like mains, transformers that you've burned out or other products you burn out when you incorrectly hooked up the wrongs mains voltage. There's a problem here in Australia we get a lot of you know if you import a lot of stuff you'll get 110 volts, use test equipment on eBay You've got to be very careful important in here and it's not a problem you Yanks wouldn't have too much or you know who else uses 110 volts.

but you guys wouldn't have too many problems because you import stuff and if you're a 240 volt product you would add up to 110. Me: yeah the magic smoke like this isn't going to escape, it's just gonna like even not power up or do you know have reduced performance or whatnot. So there's a lot of power behind a 240-volt mains. In fact, there's 2400 watts or even more before the main fuse will blow anyway.

like I think I've got a 16 amp breaker here from my 240 volt nominal and well it 230 volt nominal I actually get bit over 240 volts in the lab here which is still within specification Anyways, a lot of power behind that and it kept on delivering it. and probably a thumbs down to Willer for not including any mains fusing in that. Yeah, I'm not sure if I mention that in the previous review. I have to have a look Anyway, yeah, that could have prevented my lab almost burning down and luckily the smoke alarm here didn't go off because if it did, would have cost me about 1800 bucks for the fire engine call out.

anyway. If you liked it, give it a big thumbs up. As always discussed down below, catch you next time.