Hi In a previous video, I did a little soldering iron shootout of sorts between this new model Weller W/e Tenten and the venerable Hakko Fx-888 of between them and Louis Rossman fellow, a video blogger. You should subscribe to his channel if you haven't seen it, it's excellent. He does repair videos and other advice and stuff, and he basically did a response video to this saying, well, these are old technology and he doesn't know why they're still on sale and you basically kind of paraphrasing. you can go watch the video, link it in down below for yourself, then they're basically pretty crap and you shouldn't buy them.

His advice was he would rather have a new technology soldiering iron even if it's a ripoff one. In his particular example, he was referring to basically the the sort of more professional upgrade to the Hakko Triple 8 here and that was the FX R9 V 1 and that FX 9 v 1. Very good iron of course, very capable and it does use in new technology as we'll talk about, but it's like a two hundred and fifty dollar plus dollar class iron. So you know a completely different price bracket to these older technology irons so to speak.

But you can actually buy ripoff, you know, clones on ebay or a LaBarbera or wherever if that. heyco. FX They're about the same price as these, so about you know, hundred odd US dollars or something like that. So Lewis's argument is that he would rather have one of the new technology irons even if it's a ripoff compared to a genuine one of these.

like using the older technology for the same price. And it's an interesting argument. I recommend you watch his video down below. so this video is going to kind of be a response to that response I Guess but it's as a standalone video base.

Looking at the difference between an old technology iron like the FX triple ad or the Weller here and a new technology iron. This.jb C2b2b series our iron. but this is a very expensive iron. I Think it's like five hundred dollars or something like that.

Now when we're talking about the difference between old and new technology, I'm using the quote marks I'm even though it's you know it's technically correct. The difference is not so much in the station itself or even the power available in the station like this is a 65 watt capable I and I believe the JBC happens to be like a hundred and thirty watts our peak power so it's more powerful, but that's not really what we're talking about here. The difference is in the the tips are the same basically, but the way it actually transfers the heat to these tips and measures it yes they are turned off otherwise I'd be smelling something quite bad. So first of all, let's look at the old style our soldering iron technology which has been around from day dot and you can still buy it and in my opinion they are still a very useful irons as we'll get into.

We'll do some demonstrations later, but if you take off the sleeve here, you can see that there is a ceramic heater element in here like this. And in terms of the Hakko I don't actually know where the actual temperature sensor itself is. it may actually be embedded in the ceramic element or whatever. But basically these old technology ones.

the tip is just that, it is just the tip. Now you can get poorly designed tips, you can get really well-designed tips, and there will be thermal performance differences between them and between manufacturers, but the point is is that they're basically the tip is decoupled from physically separate from the heating element and the temperature sensor. So you basically got extra thermal resistance in there because you've got to rely on the contact and maybe some air because that's a little bit loosey-goosey you know. so there's not as good a contact between the elements.

Also, when the element heats up, there's going to be some lag. but to win that element heating up and the tip actually getting hot, and, well, that's not a great thing when you're soaring because when you apply your solder down onto the copper and you know if you've got a large heat sink, you're doing a large ground plane or a large thermal mass like that, then it can suck away a lot of the heat and all soldering ions, regardless of whether they're new or old. technology will actually have a drop in temperature and I'll explain that in a minute. But these newer technology ions, not just this, JBC but the Hakko Fx-888 It actually contains the heating element itself up there in there somewhere.

I Don't know if I can find like a cutaway drawing or something all our fine one, but the element will be integrated into the tip as well as the temperature sensor. And the way you can tell is because look, it's got electrical contacts on here and sure enough, you can actually measure that There we go. There's like presumably the coil resistance I don't know which way around the contacts go and which ones, the thermocouple element and all that. But basically the element and the thermocouple are built into the tip.

Now you don't really have to be a you know thermal expert to understand that this is going to be a more responsive technology. When you apply power to that heating element, the the tip is going to heat up quicker and faster assuming all things are equal. equal amount of power, equal amount of element, and everything else because there is direct coupling inside here. They've specifically engineered and designed and made these so that they have better thermal performance than just I.

You know, the ceramic heating element and well heat all get through to the tip eventually kind of thing. So they're the two differences between the old and the new technology and there is absolutely no doubt at all that the new technology is better If you can afford it and get an integrated Element tip soldering iron like this one for want of a better word I Don't know that'll do, but are these old-style ones you know I don't know the exact terms that Louis years but he basically said, you know they're they're hopeless, right? Don't just don't by them I'm you're better off buying a clone version of one of these. Even if it's you know real crap quality, you're better off doing this and well. There's some merit in his argument, because of course Louis does.

Mostly you know he's a professional repair tech, so he repairs motherboards and and all sorts of other you know, consumer electronics that have very large ground planes on them and lots of very good delicate surface mount stuff on those ground planes and things like that. So you know if you're doing professional electronics, repair and maybe assembly work like that and didn't get one of these, if you can afford it, get a direct heat iron. So there's absolutely no argument there. But really, the question for this video is that are these old-style ones any good? Are they still useful and I reckon the answer is yes and I'll demonstrate it.

You can still do a awful lot, if not most of the stuff you can do with an old older style iron like this. Personally, I'm going to be using my JBC in the lab here if I have a choice because yes it is better performance as you will see. All right. So let's see one of the advantages of these direct heat irons, but bear in mind this one is a hundred and thirty Watts peak compared to 65 watt iron here.

But if we switch them on then we'll actually be able to see how quickly they heat up. And this one? Yeah, well actually sorry, that's that's wrong. Go away for this thing to power up right? Anyway, well it's basically there. The thing we thought this one that has like an auto hour sleep mode.

so it actually sleeps when you put it into the stand like this and the actual temperature is 225. it's actually dropping, but when you pick it up, it can actually heat up within I Believe the spec for this is three second or two. two seconds or something like that. Two or three seconds.

Very typical to have these heat up so you can actually have an auto detect stand like this and which cools the iron down and as soon as you pick it up it Boom! See how it's got power on the screen that shows the amount of power that it's actually driving into this and if we put it on here, we could actually see that power bar go up right? It's now delivering a hundred percent power like that and it's and It's dropping. You'll notice that this is, well, your that 120. This one goes right down. whereas of course you've seen this in the previous video these more traditional ones that they take a long time to heat up.

that's going to take quite a while to get to 260 so you wouldn't have a like a setback mode for as you know, one of these more traditional irons because it just takes too long to actually heat these things up. But these aren't magic. Of course they're gonna drop if you actually look at the specs for this JBC Iron It says it drops typically 35 degrees C temperature tip temperature and it says well, competing ions I Guess they're referring to these older technology ones here. the non direct heat type.

then they can be up to 70 degrees C temperature drop. But let's actually do the sponge test I've set this to 1 to 60. You can see there's a little bit of overshoot there and we're back where we're good. Let's actually put it on there.

Tip: look at that where well so that sensing is the sense is not terrific is it is it genuinely actually going down to 85 degrees? Celsius But if it is, look at how quickly it recovers right. Bang it's it's already back. it overshot to 280 but it's back you know up. ready to do the next joint and that's the advantage of these things.

These things are very powerful in that respect, in that you can do lots of joints very quickly. If you want to do a joint every second or two, you probably should have one of these. This may not cut it if you do that so that temperature drop can be a real big deal. It can make or break a weight, what's temperature you solder it and B what types of devices you're able to sort.

If you're looking at a reasonably you know, a large copper ground plane like this, it's going to absorb or sink more heat from the tip of the soldering iron, then a solder in a little you know, 6:03 surface-mount component with a tiny little pad, or if you're sold in the big tab of a big power transistor or something that will act as a big heat sink. And this also has to do with the temperature melting point temperature of your solder And we wait, go into the metallurgical stuff of that. that's a whole field in its own thing in the plastic region and you've got to understand all sorts of things. But suffice it to say that your lead-free solder that that you know you're supposed to use these days has a higher melting point temperature of - it varies depending on the type, but this type part 99 see here melts at a nominal 227 degrees Celsius and your good old lead solder like your good old 60/40 or yep, you know, 63 37 or you don't like the South bit ones like this.

these will melt at 183 degrees C So there's a good what 45 odd degrees difference between these two. And when you when you're soldering your joint, you've got a factor in your account, that temperature drop of your tip. So let's actually just experiment with a couple of these different types and I'll show you. So what we're going to try and do is solder onto a ground plane like this.

It's not the biggest ground plane in the world, but it's a ground plane using lead-free solder that melts at a nominal 227 degrees. Celsius And we'll set both of our irons to 240 degrees so above that. so we should find that it'll actually melt and now I'll put some flux on there just so it activates and let's have a look at our old school iron. Here we go.

It should the mop the solder. It's actually it will melt. There you go. it will melt because it's reached that temperature.

But let's see if it'll actually do that down on the board. Shall we? Here we go: No, no, it's not. It's not working well, not. it's like stone motherless cold.

Look, I mean it's just that hopeless, right? It's kind of sort of just stuck there. But let's do the exact same thing with 240 degrees on the JBC here. So let's give this a bell. One side of this tip is a bit bit crusty, so let's try the GBC Shall we? Let's see if it can do it at 240 degrees.

C Yep, it can do it. Just it. It's melting it. Yeah, it did the job.

There you go. So that is the difference there between these two. With the direct heat iron, we can solder lead-free onto a ground plane at, you know, 240 degrees. C We can go down a bit, we could drop it down to 220 and it's just not going to work at all.

But we can go to a really low, safe temperature and that's the goal of almost any soldering is to use the lowest temperature you can. That's going to do the job properly and do it in a timely manner. Of course it. it's no point I Go in so low a temperature that you have to leave the iron there forever until it actually you know, melts up because that could leaving it longer there could heat up the component more and stress it.

so it's a bit of a trade-off. But in generally speaking, you want to do it at the lowest temperature you can. That gets the job done quickly enough and in this case this one, the direct heat iron wins. Okay, let's so let's try the Hakko at 260 shall we? Let's give that a bill and see if we can get it to heat up.

Come on, you can do it. Nope. Doesn't like it Okay, let's try it at 270 shall we? Okay, let's try it on a new section here, complete with the flux at 270 and no not, still can't do it. and if we try it at 280, I can actually get it to do the business.

but once again, remember this is a less powerful iron. 65 watts versus a hundred and thirty Watts peak there. But you know I was able to get it at a lower temperature. But yeah, it's kinda sort of a bit hit-and-miss you have to leave it there for a while, but you can see the difference just in case you're curious.

note the well I can't do it at 240 Eva So plus and 260 with the well up. Yeah, it's struggling, the solders melting, but geez, it's not that great. and once again, you just get the JBC on there and at at nominal 240. no problems whatsoever that, but it's a different ball game if we want to use 60/40 solder that melts at 183.

C I've got all four iron set to 240 volts. set temperature here and let's try the Hakko. This has already got some over here and bingo that 240. What takes a second or two to get the heat into it, but no problems whatsoever, right? And we can do the same thing with the Weller here 240.

You haven't tried the Willi yet, but there we go. It can do a similar thing so they can all melt and of course the JBC is going to I'm choking on the fumes. JBC is going to do the business, but as you can see, it's kind of like a much quicker application there. like if I go at that boom that was with no flux.

Let's try this with the hakko with no flux, shall we? It's almost as good, but you can feel it stick a little bit more, but there's not much in that both can like. All of them can use a low temperature of 240. see with 60/40 solder on to a ground plane like that. Tell the JBC is ahead but not as much as it is with the lead-free solder.

All right. So let's actually have some fun with the flurry TS 320 thermal camera which can go up to 260 degrees C So I'll use Led lettered soda and we'll use the 240 degree temperature we had before and we'll check out the how it looks under the thermal camera see if we can see the temperature drop. Alright, so let's do this: I'm going to use the hakko first and I haven't tried this yet. So let's actually I've got What I've got is the center point.

This is the point I'm going to solder so that's going to be I'll put that like smack in the middle like that so we can read the temperature up there. But also the Maxima should tell us the maximum soldering iron temperature up there. So let's do a test. Okay, so what we need to do is I actually set up the emissivity and there's a whole list of our custom materials and stuff in here.

and really like you know this, copper, polished and all that sort of jazz. But yeah, really, we're just going to have to do this by experimentation by setting the custom value like this. I've already set it to 0.5 it was a bit over. so I'm going to set it to 0.4 and we'll give that a ball.

And because we know our temperature of our irons pretty accurate because we measured at the other time to 40, our I'll tweak it a bit more. But yeah, we'll get it right? Okay, I'm going to call that at 0.35 emissivity 246 doesn't matter, right? We can. Actually what we want to do is we want to see the temperature drop. So we're looking in the top right corner of that and see the temperature drop.

So let's try the Hakko at there we go. So it was 240. Let's see what happens when we actually heat up our big copper. Here There we go, it's dropping boy.

but once again it's the it's the well, the top side of the tip. I Guess you could say so that's why is it doing? it's barely doing it was doing it well before there we go there we go see so it hasn't dropped by a huge amount. It's dropping maybe 215 or something like that, hasn't It's not dropping by a huge amount on this particular type of cop clad, but let's see how the Jvc holds up to that, shall we? Wow Okay, it looks like we've got a very different emissivity for our JBC here, so I might have to I may have to tweak it yet again. it really.

you know it's a big difference. they're quite surprised by that. But anyway, let's start, let's tweak it again. All right, we'll run with that.

I've got an emissivity of 0.75 so let's do the JBC here. You can see that yep, it really doesn't drop by anything. but once again, this is a hundred and thirty-five Watts peak. Just remember that so that could be all the difference in this particular case.

But as you can see, it did that with basically variable yet maybe. Okay, let's just say 10 degrees C drop or something like that, you can I You get the idea that the direct ions like these direct heat ions are obviously gonna have a better thermal capacity than your old soil ones. So let's actually just turn the hakko up to 270 which is 30 degrees higher than the JBC. But in terms of actually don't know doing a ground plane like this.

but in terms of actually damaged component, it's going to basically drop down to the same temperature anyway, so you know it's not really a problem. and there it is, you know it's It's a little bit struggling a little bit, but once again you know you could turn it up. but then you go like it's It's melting just fine. but of course the JBC of course will just do that.

like straight on I don't even need to add in it like straight on to 240 So you know there you go. But at the end of the day that coppers probably at, you know, a similar sort of temperature. Yeah, it's better, but it's not a huge deal. really.

still works. it gets the job done. You might have turned their heat up a little bit, but it's not enough to damage your components. For low thermal mass components, there's going to be practically no difference between these.

really. If you're doing surface mount, solder in or anything like that, that there's just like this one's just going to do as good a job as this one. It's only when you get into a higher thermal mass components and really that if you're doing a joint per second or something like that, that could make a difference. But overall, it's a huge amount for just general purpose soldering.

So there you go. I Hope you found that interesting. Look at a old technology indirect heat one and a new modern direct-drive one and I completely agree with Louis. these are better.

There's absolutely no doubt about that. Um, but these are not I don't necessarily agree that these are you know, crap or you shouldn't buy them I Think you know for a hundred bucks? Okay, you could argue like Lewis said that a hundred dollars you can buy a ripoff. Direct-drive won a ripoff. Hey Co-director I've won from the shins in market ins.

crap quality inside. but he reckons I haven't tested one, but he reckons that it works almost as good as the direct drive. Hakko Fx-888 I won. but they work.

Okay, yeah, you're not gonna be doing doing high-volume production. sorry if you're they're just. you know, like point point point. You know, like an extra second or two it takes to heat up to reheat this compared to this.

If you have a look at that heyco graph again, then yeah, you know it. You have to let it. If you did two seconds per joint, then this one's going to do the job and this one just may not work at all. If you want two seconds per joint depending on once again, the type of solder that you use, the thermal capacity of the thermal sync capacity of the device, you try that, the pager component you're trying to heat up and all that sort of jazz.

There's lots of things that go into it. but yeah, if you're doing high speed solar in or maybe be ground planes like Lewis is doing with repairs and stuff like that on big modern motherboards and stuff like that, Yeah, definitely get one of these, but these are not as crap as you might think. You know awful lot with these. if most things that you're you know regular hobbyist or enthusiast is going to encounter, so hope you found that interesting.

If you did, please give it a big thumbs up. And as always, discussing it down below and I'm sure everyone will. And yes, I plan on getting pace. Have got a new a the 80s 200 direct drive iron that they're sending me and I'll probably get an FX hey Co FX Direct Drive I Ins I is that the correct term Direct Heating Direct Drive I Integrated Tip whatever you want to call it Anyway, it's interesting, but there's a lot of variables that go into this.

As I said, the type of solder and the parts you're using in this temperature. you want to sort her out, the recovery time that you want, the number of joints per second that you want to do, the maximum temperature of the component you're looking at, the not only the maximum temperature of the component, but the amount of time you can leave that heat on there. and there's just countless things. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, you can.

But yeah, if you can afford it, get one of these direct drive ones anyway. Hope you found it interesting. Catch you next time.