Hi in a recent video I Got this little portable USB soldering iron in the mail bag and I Kind of like just dismissed it like blur like why is this a thing but quite a lot of people said hey, Dave give it a fair sucker. The salve Like is this thing actually useful? All right. Well, let's take a look at a five. What is basically a five dollar delivered from China USB Soldering iron.

Can it actually be any good? Well, it's not going to be that great, but is it actually useful or not? Let's find out now. this particular one is actually a GT branded and it's like like German branded or something. But from the looks of it, like the molding and everything else in it looks absolutely identical to the five dollar one you can get delivered on. eBay So I'm going to assume that they're identical for these purposes.

Now, it's a nominal eight. What? Soldering iron? Of course, you couldn't get eight watts from a normal USB outlet like 5 volts 1 amp. You'll only get like 5 watts maximum before the protection kicks in. but assuming you've got a higher current source, you can do that for 50 degrees.

C It is fixed temperature. You're going to want a ridiculously high temperature like 450. C Because there is no thermal mass inside this thing at all. It's basic, and because it's only that 8 watt capability, it's got basically no power.

You need the higher temperature in order to overcome the massive thermal drop that we're absolutely guaranteed to see in this thing when we actually solder something with it. And there's the specs for those playing along at home. Let's go now. the first thing I got wrong in the mail bag is that it seemed obvious that you just screw this protective cap off and there's your soldering iron.

But that's not the case because you aren't supposed to screw it off because there's the tip. If you want to have a look at it and the tip just sits in there like that. it's just got the just like got like a custom little receptacle in there. you aren't supposed to screw that off.

it's actually supposed that is supposed to hold it in and you're supposed to pull it off like that and that retains the tip in place. It's a tip for those that want to see it. No. I Don't believe you can buy any other chips.

There's no chisel tip. it's just this a fine point job. So it's I think it's basically take it or leave it if there are different tips. I'll annotate the video but I Don't believe there are very thin tip it is.

You know there's virtually no thermal mass in that at all, so you can forget about doing any major components as we'll see. but hey, it might be useful for you know, some basically filled SMD stuff or just joining a couple of wires together in the field or just doing a hack repair in the field and that just shows you the size difference. We've got a JBC tip here and a Heyco small Hako chisel tip. You can see how tiny this thing is not only in terms of the conical tip, but just the thermal mass available compared to, say, a direct heat.

JBC Tip like that, but it's not designed to compete. It's a five buck. USB hacky on the spot field soldering iron comes with a USB cable 3.5 millimeter photo jack that just plugs in the end. That is definitely not the best thing for this sort of job, and no doubt they're going to use the least amount of copper inside this cable as physically impossible.

So you know. I Expect a lot of loss in just the connector and the cables and and by the way, like it feels okay in your hand. You know, like there's no real finger guard at the end. but you're not going to slide off like that.

So economics are okay. that doesn't feel like I So I think that's electronic touch sensor on it and it comes with a little stand like that, but that's probably all you need out in the field so it doesn't burn. Whatever it is, you're lying the thing on and you get some solder with it. Composition Unknown: I Won't be using that.

I'll be using my own stuff so that we at least have an Owen here. I'm using a little lithium ion five volt battery pack capable of two point four amps. We're going to use a Rd Tech USB meter. This is the routing one same as who do those little power supplies.

so we'll be able to see how much power it's drawing and I'll be using my lead-free point Nine millimeter. Loctite solder. Plug it straight in I Didn't expect it to do anything because it's just in standby mode. It's just waiting.

This is like a capacitive touch thing. so let's go. Hello, Nope. hello.

McFly What? It's drawing. No power at all. It suddenly decided to work and we have the magic smoke escaping. Not sure if you can see that.

that's a normal though. That on a new tip. oh it's coming out of here too. Whoo! This is a Smellivision so it if I know how to get this thing to turn on.

this is ridiculous. What a joke I Just shuffled my feet I Think it might have an A touch detection problem here. I Like I Don't know if it's coincidental, but I just swiped my foot to try and generate some light. You know, some steady key? Whoa.

There we go. Look at that. It's what. What? Oh my.

There we go. Well look at all that flux going up in smoke. The flux is just. that's the problem with the high temperature is that the flux just absolutely vanishes and doesn't go into your joint.

So right there it's It's not terrific, but it's melting the solder. Uh-huh I Figured out this dodgy touch switch on here with but as you can see, it doesn't work. Can you figure out why? Well, maybe if I lift my hand off the bench, look at that. it's because my hand was touching the static dissipative bench like this.

It just bleeds the charge away. There's not enough you know. 50 Hertz and crap pickup on there to to make this touch switch work. And it's worse.

If course, if I touch the conductive black back in on the thing. vastly lower impedance again going to earth and it doesn't work. So you cannot use this stupid thing with an anti-static wrist strap. Unbelievable.

Hey, maybe you can use it one of those wireless ones. It'll work. a treat. For 50 it's going over.

It's been rated for 450. 479 Controlled Iron r500 Wow That's shocking. Start time up there. We go there, we go.

When does it get good enough to start melting solder? There we go. Seven seconds, Seven, eight seconds. That's not too shabby. heats up.

Alright, no problems. Anyway, let's do the old sponge test. Shall we? Here we go: Five fifteen. Whoo! Droppin.

But it's still gonna be able to solder like it's not great, right? You just keep that on there and it's just gonna go like oh no, it's stuck. It's it's soldered itself to my thermocouple. Oh come on, come on, come on. Say it couldn't even heat up quickly with that sort of mass had just just having.

like the thermocouple there just couldn't do it. So of course. but this is exactly what I expect for an eight watt iron. so you know it is what it is.

All right, let's try the ground plane test. I Don't expect it might buy it a little bit because it's got such a high temperature. but look at that flux is just vanishing like not-not-not did initially by it. That's because of the high temperature, but it certainly can't do it.

Poor things trying. But no. I know it's like switched off. stupid but crap.

anyway. I Don't expect it to do a ground plane like that. That's not us job. Okay, let's see if we can solder a standard dip package on a double sided our.

PCB Nothing particularly hard here so let's give it a go. Here we go see. the problem is the flux burns up before you even get the iron on there. Let me get the angle better.

You know it does the job because this is not feel a vision. Okay, let's try that again. Here we go, it's not too bad. it's doing the business all night.

Look, you can go from joint to joint. it's alright. it expected for her. such a high bloody temperature.

So there you have it that actually produced quite a reasonable result there. actually I quite like that, but you know you'd expect it. I'm just don't go doing much yarn tree work with this cuz you know I could easily lift the pads, the temperatures just so high and even did a decent job flowing through to the other side as well. No worries for dibs.

I Know this isn't the correct inductor for this, but let's let's give it a burl anyway. Well, there we go. Can we do that? Large pad? Yeah, we can do that. Large pad.

No worries. Can it do that? inductor? Oh yeah, looks like it did it as I mentioned. One of the downsides of having an untempered controlled iron is that an especially one that's so high this one goes like five hundred degrees is that you can lift pads. So let's just get some pads here, shall we? And let's just try that.

Are we going to lift them there? We go lift it a pad. Oops. As it heats up, there we go. You can see it's mostly contained within the tip.

It's just not registering because the of course there's not my register in the correct heat because of the reflective polished nature of the tip. I Haven't got the emissivity set. Rather like that profile, it really contains it. You can see where the heating element is right down near the tip and then it just it doesn't propagate back down.

Nice trying to do some 15 gauge wire here and it's just it just ain't working. No. I'm just really not having any luck with this 18 gauge wire. Can't do it.

Alright, let's try some 15 gauge wire. It's the shape of the tip plus the wattage as well. It's not the best. Yep, no worries.

15 gauge wire? Not a problem. Okay, let's take it apart. We've got three screws here. I Expect nothing fancy, just a the 5 volts directly to the heating element basically via a MOSFET or something like that.

and just the touch sense has probably just got like a one-shot retriggerable monostable in there with a touch. front end configuration on that, so you know, really easy. could even meet Triple V. Ok, here we go.

Oh there we go. Pops open. got a little spring there connects through to the just the touchpad. Got a big electro in there that'll be a one hung.

Oh and yep I'm just got a MOSFET. As suspected, just the MOSFET are switching there for the five volts going straight through to the element and there's that. that's the wire going over for the touch and that will be Oh Mana Stable. What is that? They called it triple Five because that's basically what you need.

So it's a, um, a classic building block circuit. The Triple Five touch Mana stable. So because it's sensitivity absolutely sucks ass. they should just put a button in there and be done with it.

and that. MOSFET For those playing along, hope it's upside down so all the electrons are going to fall out. 35 over no.6 They've actually done a half reasonable job using thickish gauge. Why are there? The traces are thick enough for the job.

You know you're still gonna get losses in there, but obviously does the job. And of course, there's one thing you won't find on here and that's any sort of poly switch or fuse. Yeah, I Hope you're yeah, battery packs got protection for that. The soldering has just did chopped off that.

Don't please don't cut through the solder joints. It's not good. Solder joints are a little bit, how are you doing? but for five bucks delivered I'm not going to complain. Well, there's your problem for your touch sensitive switch.

Here's the touch sensor going in. It's just got a reverse biased diode going to the pin four which is the reset line there and basically but the touch just goes straight into pin two which is the trigger pin on this and you'll find this in the classic building block circuits. And yeah, it works. If you build it up on a breadboard and you touch the thing here like yeah, your little LED comes on and woohoo! You know, classic beginner type circuit and that's great, but it's just piss-poor in this configuration because it does not have the touch sensitivity required for a product like this.

So why they couldn't have just put a damn tactile switch on here and then just have the tactile button coming up the top? Ah man. I Died bloody well mod this thing actually. So I Reckon what you could do is just bugger off this touch. Rubbish.

Actually, you know, remove that, maybe drill it out a bit larger if need to. Maybe shave off some of the bottom stuff around there and put in? I Just a small tactile switch. Maybe one of those long button long rubber actuators on it. Rubbers better than plastic, just feels rubbery and just connect that through to the trigger point.

Of course you'll have to wire up to the top side there to get your trigger happening, but that'd work. just a treat. I Mean to just push that button? Or you could just simply get rid of all this crap and just have the 5 volt USB straight through. Um, because really, the magic in this thing is really the design of the tip, which it does.

You know, a pretty half decent job anyway. I've keeper. For the price, it's a decent job of keeping all the heat contained in this low thermal mass tip which is good enough to at least do some you know, like spur-of-the-moment hockey type soldering. So yeah, you don't need any other crap too gimmicky.

So there you have it, That's a look at one of these $5 delivered USB soldering irons and I'm actually quite surprised that it is in bit like the usability of this thing. No. I am NOT going to give it a thumbs up. It does not deserve a thumbs up because there's so many things wrong with it.

But hey, if you stuck at a pinch and you you know you're out in the field and you just want to do some hacky type soldering and you've got one of your little arm the ball ever. I Guess you know a computer with a pseudo bear? Put although everyone carries one of these little portable battery packs these days, then it's it's gonna get the job done. Um, just don't use it for anything serious. I'm quite surprised at the performance of that.

So there you go. We should you have one. You know, if you want to do something out in the field in a you know at a pinch it could get you out of trouble. So there you go.

Very surprised by that. Add a pinch. he's probably going to get the job done. So anyway I hope you liked it.

If you did, please give the video that is a big thumbs up. And as always discuss down below, catch you next time.