Hi. This is just a quick follow-up video to the previous one I did which I'll link in down below and at the end if you haven't seen it and you should, otherwise it might not make sense. I'm just talking about the difference between an old tip solder and iron like this: I won't touch it, that's the hot end and a new modern technology direct-drive tip like this and I even though it wasn't supposed to be like a review comparison between the Hakko Fx-888 EC is iron because it was not an Apples-to-apples comparison because the hakko is a nominal well, sort of. you know, nominal slash sharp peak power of 65 watt for the iron itself and the JBC doesn't say it on here, but this is has a hundred and thirty watt peak power capability.

So basically, this is like exactly double the power of this Heyco one. So it's not an Apples to Apples comparison in terms of actual power delivery for these two items. But that wasn't the purpose of the video. the purpose was to show or attempt to show the difference.

The thermal performance difference on a ground plane like we've got here, but there's something I failed to mention in the previous video. Of course, the JBC one with its director drive technology worked a lot better than the Hakko. On this particular ground plane test was a lot of people said, well, that's just due to this is double the power over this one. Well, let's actually take a more subtle look at it and I actually forgot to mention this in the previous one I Don't think it's just to do with that.

so let's take a look at it. What I've got is I've got both set to 270 degrees Celsius here and I've got 60 40. Our solder basically are the South bit that's got a little bit of copper, but it melts at 183 degrees C I've already put some there and over here on separate sides so the heat doesn't interfere with each other here. And the thing we're gonna watch out for now, you just see this little flushing dot down here.

this little flushing decimal point. Keep your eyes that okay because every time that turns on, it means that the heating element inside here is turning on. So if this soldering iron is going to struggle with this ground plane, the heater should be on all the time. It should be delivering that power straight in there.

And the JBC actually has a really nice little peak power display. You can see how it actually goes to sleep if I put it in there. It actually drops in temperature like this because it heats up within a couple of seconds, drops down to 280 or something. but as soon as you lift it up, it detects that applies power and it gives you power from zero to a hundred percent.

So I'm going to assume that this is linear power delivery. so from 0 to 130 watts and we can kind of do a crude comparison. so this is double the capability. So if we see this power up here go to 50% we can assume that it's basically you know, more or less delivering the same power to the element as this 65 watt.

HAECO So let's actually put the soldiering iron on here. I'll do it at the same time. If you can watch both at the same time, you may have to replay it. So let's put it on here.

Maybe I should get a bit of solder on there first. No worries here we go just to get it started. I blow the smoke away and no, those are not lead fumes. they are.

that's the rosin flux inside there. Anyway, watch the heating element and the power here. Okay, so apply them at the same time and the JBC like really died like it just instantly goes molten like that. It's really good, but the hakko struggles.

but you'll notice that the LED on the hiko, even though it's struggling right, it gets. it still works. It still works Okay, but it's struggling to deliver that power through. But you'll notice that the lead is not on all the time.

Why is it? So and look at the JBC over here, right where we're basically delivering nothing at the moment. and then we go straight on there and it's only going to jump up to I Don't know what? 30 odd 28% 30% I think I have might have had it even jump up to 40% previously. According to this, it's a fairly fast response in there, but it's not even delivering the 65 watt capability of this. So you can say from this little experiment here, you can say that the the difference here that we're seeing in that the JBC is providing a much better thermal performance to this ground plane is not really jus.

or it doesn't appear to be solely due to the fact that this is a hundred and thirty. Watson This is 65 because it's not delivering that 435 what's there. so it's not even delivering the 65 watts this one is capable of. And when you would think that this heyco going on here you can see you know it melts fairly quickly, but it's not.

The heat hasn't spread as well as it does with the JBC. You might have to watch this in HD to actually see the molten solder down there. Sorry if you can't but you know, trust me this one is. You know it still works.

Okay, you know it still does the job, but it's not. It doesn't spread the solder as well as it does over here, right? So this gets the heat in quicker and spreads it quicker as you'd expect because it's a direct-drive technology, the element is inside the tip. It's got proper coupling as I showed in the previous video. So I Think what we see in here is it has much less to do with the power of 130 watts versus 65 and more to do with the tip design and the coupling of the element and the ability to deliver the power and also the thermal response loops in the temperature sensor and how that all integrates into the iron.

This is just the JBC and these direct heat ones are just better designed in that respect. The tips, the thermocouple, the tip and the element are all integrated in there and engineered more better. and this Hako should be delivery. Look, it just wasn't even.

It didn't even detect that. it takes longer to even detect that there's power being sucked out of that tip. So it shows that the tip actually and this is a well no in fact of our soul during. if you didn't know is that the thicker you have the tip your bigger or like the bigger the tip, the bigger the thermal mass it can deliver.

You're better off having a nice big fat tip on there that stores the heat in the tip and then that initial surge of heat when you apply it to the joint comes from the actual stored heat inside the tip rather than from the element itself. And only when it starts to cool down does the temperature sensor detect that and starts to turn on the element. And that's when you get into the control. You know the sensing part of the tip and the control loop itself and how fast it reacts.

And you know all that sort of stuff and the actual engineering that goes into the design of the temperature sense of the tip and the element and the couplings between them between these. Look one two and then it switched off. It only turned on for a second and then a flash flash. Why is it not on the Orton on all the time? If I can feel this like struggling, you know, Why Is that Like why is it pulsing? Why wouldn't you apply the power all the time? So how much power does this software and I and actually draw? Well, let's take a look.

This is our Watts figure here. Sorry about the little line out there on the LCD I Have to fix that. So watch this figure when this LED comes on. Now interestingly, when we actually pair it up, let's have a look like six watts is it's like idle consumption? Okay, but then when it switches on, look, it's actually like a hundred over a hundred watts when it's actually continuously like a first heating up.

So let's apply it to the ground plane and let's see what it actually delivers. You might have seen it do. There we go. 55 Odd Watts So even if I just like literally leave it there, it's not delivering continuously and I think there might be some lag between the you know, like the update rate probably isn't quick enough to do It but I am seeing like pulses of like 50 odd watts or something like that.

So it seems that it actually is switching on in relation to this lead here. but they're just the update rate. It isn't quite fast enough to pick them all. So let's do the JBC.

You can see that a Druwa six. what's their Idol Just like the just like the Hakko, so they're very similar in that respect. Look 50 odd watts. So there you go.

What? No. 50 at 17.21 it jumps around a bit. There might be some pulsing currents in there. This thing's not quite up to the task, but you can see the difference is it's continuously applying power whereas the hakko was not.

Why is it so? hmm? let's go to Dave Cat because people get all upset if I don't show the Weller Okay, there's the Weller just buried 9282 watts or whatever. Just bear in mind that this is going through the hundred and ten volt transformer. so there's going to be a residual. You know, power drawn by the transformer.

So yeah, it's not going to be as accurate as the other ones. But there you go. let's have a look. Oh better set it to 270 15 watts.

No. there you go. Now you jump up to 82 there. No, but it's it like it I'd say continuously.

Yeah, it's drawing like 80. Yeah, No. 50. What's with the occasional pulse up, but so very similar to the hakko I'd say but yeah but sort of lower.

So hmm. why is it so you can kind of get the hakko to switch on all the time if you like really sponge it kind of. It stays on most of the time the majority of the time during 90 Odd. What's there? So what's actually going on here? Why is this Heyco? I are not delivering continuous power to the tip here when it's clearly sucking all the heat out of it? Well, this can be explained on a Dave CAD drawing it.

so let's take a look at it. Now it's basically to do with the physical construction of these old-style tips like this. Here's the ceramic heat element in here and you can probably see inside there where the temperature sensor is. Here's a photo from Bravo V on the EEV blog forum thank you very much I Put some light through here and it's a clearer indication.

You can actually see it looks like the temperature sensor elements up there so it's embedded inside the ceramic. so the ceramic heating element will be kind of here and then there will be a sensor up the top there which is kind of where you want it because it's like right at that. You know you want the sensor to be as close to the tip as possible, but if we actually have a look here at what's actually going on now I've done a whole video explaining all this sort of stuff and you know our theatres and all this sort of jazz. So I'll link that in at the end of the video, watch that.

it's a tutorial on theme of thermal heat sink design. Some of this may not make sense if you you know don't know your thermal basics, but basically we have a heat source here and it's equivalent to a resistance circuit. so the heat is effectively the current flowing through these thermal resistances. This is what our Theta here is.

They're just thermal resistances and voltages are like temperatures here at the different points in the system. So let's have a look at the physical construction here. We have the heating element inside the ceramic here, then we have the thermocouple up near the tip here. and then of course we have that.

You know, all that like kind of loosely coupled. It is a rate you know. there's a little bit of play in there, but not a huge amount, but it basically slides over. So we're going to have thermal resistances at each of these points.

and it doesn't matter what the values are, but let's actually have a look. So we've got our power source here generating our power. We've got a thermal resistance between the heating element and the actual tip that's inside the ceramic. It's it's going to be reasonably low for example, but then from the sensor.

So we've got the temperature of the heating element, the temperature of the sensing element, and the temperature of the tip and the thermal resistance. The coupling between this ceramic element and this tip like this is going to be quite hi because of this old-style technology and the loosely coupled nature in their you know air gap and you know there's like, you know it's it's got some contact and then it's got to radiate out and you know there's gonna. So this our Theta from the sensor to the tip. That's what our Theta St means.

From the sensor to the tip and of the healer to the tip. this is actually going to be quite large in these old-style tips. So what happens here is that of course because the temperature sensor is the one that's part of the control loop thing and I won't go into control loop theory and all that sort of stuff and this is prude. Please excuse the crew.

D of this model didn't have time to build the scale or to paint it. The tip is not in the feedback loop like that. So when the heat drains out of this tip, when you put it on a big ground plane and the heat starts draining out, it notices this temperature drop in and then of course it increases the heat in here in the heating element and then that the temperature sensor is going to because this thermal resistance is small and this one's high this temperature. The temperature of the thermocouple inside here is going to reach that setpoint.

Say it's set to 270 the it'll apply more heat, it'll reach This will reach 270 before the tip does. So that's why it thinks oh, I'm gonna I'm at 270 degrees I'm gonna switch off the heating element and that's what we saw there. Even though we'll still drain in the heat continuously out of this temp, it was kind of like oscillating there because that's part of the feedback loop and this is a high thermal resistance. I Hope that makes sense.

Now let's actually have a look at the Weller because it's actually a different design. You'll see that inside there is the sensor and that goes inside the tip. Like that and the heating element is around the outside. So it's actually a different construction.

and in theory it should actually be better than the Hakko design which has that temperature sensor integrated into the surround. just relies on the heat radiating out to the tip. This time they're heating. You know this is a bit crude.

I Don't know the actual physical construction inside, but this is what it looks like. The heat has to go to the tip first and then to the sensor inside, so that makes more sense. So in theory it would be taking the temperature from after the tip. Here, it should work better than the Hakko, but as you've seen in the performance tests, that it basically works almost identically.

you know there's not much difference between them. and the Well Up doesn't deliver the power all the time. it's cycles as well, just like the Hakko one. So I don't understand whether it's a control loop issue in the hakko doing that.

Whether it's you know it's not fully explained by this cuz it should be better than the hakko in theory. But it's not. Now, these more modern, odd design tips as we explained in the previous video, work somewhat differently. They're all integrated there.

They're better engineered because there's no loosey-goosey coupling of this over there. It's all integrated in the heater is integrated into the ceramic and then the copper slug inside the tip. I Don't exactly know where the temperature sensor in here, and it's actually not going to differ a huge amount from this existing systems here. In terms of the thermal, like the responsive loop and everything else, it's just the engineering of the tip is better.

So it's going to have a lower thermal resistance going from the sensor to the tip and it. you know it. Kind of like. It really gets complicated if you want to analyze the design of these things, but they just fundamentally work better.

And because so many people mentioned in the previous comments, there is a different technique to these ceramic heating elements either the old or the new type. and that is what's used in the Met Cow. I'm not sure if too many others used but MIT Keller famous for using it. That's why Metcal have a lot of fan boys.

They actually use RF induction so it actually I believe it's like a 13 mega Hertz or something very high frequency that actually magnetically in ducts pow right into the tip itself and then it uses a Curie point system so they don't have adjustable temperature ions they actually have just like a fixed point and to change the temperature, you've got to change the tip but a lot of people claim it's better because you don't need to change the temperature and look I prefer adjustable temperature is I'm not saying the Met curls aren't great, they are great I have used them, they're fantastic but I just prefer having the flexibility of adjusting temporary temperature without having to physically change the tip. The Metcal tip cartridge contains a heater that consists of a copper core and an outer layer of magnetic alloy. It's the composition of this special alloy that predetermines the tip temperature and keeps it regulated at the solder connection. Surrounding the heater is an inductive wire coil through which an RF current is passed.

A phenomenon known as skin effect causes the current to be confined to the outer layer of the magnetic alloy, resulting in high resistance that causes rapid heating. As the alloy heats up, it approaches its Curie point temperature. This is a physical constant at which the alloys magnetic properties change. As the properties change, the current spreads through the hole heater, reducing the resistance which effectively reduces the power delivered.

This immediately stops the heating effect during soldering. As the tip cools, the alloy falls below its Curie point temperature and regains its magnetic properties. The skin effect immediately returns, increasing the resistance and heating begins again, repeating the cycle. As this occurs, the tip self-regulates very close to the Curie point plus or minus 1 degrees Celsius At idle, the temperature can never exceed the Curie point just as water will only boil at 100 degrees.

Celsius. Regardless of the amount of heating power in effect, Smart Heat regulates the amount of power delivered to the solder joint. The result is a system that responds dynamically to thermal loads and requires no calibration. Smart Heat systems apply direct power to the solder joint I think I Actually forgot to mention in the previous video, these traditional tips are like the cheapest solution, but potentially don't last as long because unless you've got like a a smart pull back a system which actually calls the tip down between joints.

but because they can't heat up fast enough, you can't really do that. whereas these are the next expensive. Well, these are kind of like the most expensive solution with the integrated tips and these, but these can potentially last longer. So whether or not it's a cheaper solution in the end, that's up for our debate because these should in theory last longer because they have that you know setback thing.

when you put it back in the iron, it can cool down to a lower temperature and then it heats up again. Once you pull it back out of a standard only takes two seconds and Bob's your uncle and that should in theory give you a longer life tip because it's basically it's a higher the temperature you run these out, the greater your wear on the plating and all that things all things considered. And then of course you've got the the Met Cow type I Curie Point Tips: The problem with those is that even if they're cheap, you need a lot of them because if you like to use many different styles of tips, not only do you need all the different styles of tips, but then you need all the different styles of tips in the different temperatures required for the particular purpose that you've got and you can't always use, you know, the lowest temperature. Sometimes you want to do really big stuff and you need the bigger ones.

but anyway, tips and solder and iron technology. Come on. That's there's a reason why all these different ones exist. So there you go.

I Hope you found that a little follow up interesting. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up. And as always, discuss a down below because I seem to have hit a sore point with soldering irons. He'll have no fury like solar and iron fanboys.

So yeah, go for it. Go on. I Do plan to do follow-up videos and yes, stop asking about the Tes 100 soldering iron. I might get one and I might get a review on it.

but it is not a replacement for a bench soldering iron. no matter how good its thermal performance is for its open source 60 bucks or whatever. it doesn't have the nicely integrated you know, proper burn proof, flexible lead and everything else. It doesn't even come with a power supply, you just got to use whatever it's Pro I Have no doubt it's great as a portable soldering iron, but as a bent as a replacement for a good quality, solidly engineered bench soldering station.

No way. catch you next time. Hey Look at all the flame comments down below. Go on, watch them or the tears.

One hundred and Metcal fanboys are going to go wild.