Hi I Thought we'd take a look at a complete fail in one of these. a Whip 898 D Soldering stations This one actually I've been while soldering desoldering SMD rework station thing Oh A web is actually the gangs you yeehaw Corporation and you might have seen these actually branded as a Yeehaw I Believe it looks similar to the A-10 brand one that I actually did a review of her quite some time ago and that one actually had some real major faults in at which people talked about on the forum. I didn't do a follow up video to that but I'm not sure I don't think A-10 are actually associated with WEP I think they are actually different. Maybe they rip off each other stuff I don't know.

Anyway, this is a games you Yeehaw WEP station and it's actually belongs to David He's gonna tell us all about it here. He is behind camera, put your hand in there so they know you're real. There we go and what? this was your personal station. Tell us what happened.

Yeah, had it for years. Okay, yeah, yes, this thing worked really well for years. and then I I moved apartments and I started setting up my lab again. I'd set up like this like a temporary bench.

It's covered in cardboard and all this stuff that you don't want near one of these when they go nuclear meltdown. So so I've been I've been. we're doing rework for like four hours just. I'm methodically going through different combinations of resistors and capacitors just to find like an optimum pair right.

as I calculated a few things and I knew it within a certain range size. Are you doing what like? and you can? Basically, unless you want to take the pads off? I figure hot air stations the only way to go. I'm gonna put pressure on the pads. no way you can put tweezers, tweezers, or a nice way to go, but you gotta have a separate tool for that.

Yeah, I don't know the tweeze at all. so it's the only way to go. So I've been using this for like four hours and then I put it into its its holder here and there's a magnetic detector in here which normally turns it off and you know sometimes it was a bit buggy, sometimes it would, it wouldn't turn off and you just turn it round because the research is no other place. So the switch is actually in here which has to go down the cord and the maintenance in the holder.

Yeah! I do believe. I think there's a cut-off internally like in the handle, but right? anyway. so what happened this time wasn't out at all the the the reefs which did trigger a turn the thing off but the heating element never turned off. so when you have the hot air going past the the element, it ends up cooling it.

so the device is. you know it's designed. It's just a lot more heat thermal flow regulation. Yeah, yeah yeah.

well yeah well. it has a stable zone and then once you stop the airflow, the temperature just shoots through the roof. So this got like red to white hot Like right? that guy bright I Don't have a great memory of the things I wasn't I was only half looking at that. suddenly it cut started blooming, smoke and right trying to kill me and you were trying to hold it up and wobble and it was all going all wobbly.

Yeah so this is in a carpeted room, right on a cardboard fire desk basically and it started gotten to this like gel state plastic bulbs. things are falling into my hands and I I'm trying to unplug it and get it like move outdoors because when this type of plastic goes it coats things in it. Yep, yep, my lungs. Anyway, so yeah that that happened, it was.

it was smoking for hours and yeah, this is probably why you should invest in a good one of these. not Weber Like they've got a website. they look sort of semi-professional if like you know Chinese menu design and manufacture. but they you know from the website you might get a reasonable vibe from it.

But of course when you actually look and feel of this thing, you know when you get it you know it's pretty cheap. It's built down right? So how much did this cost on? eBay Like 70 bucks. 70 bucks and that included a soldering iron and the I just noticed this. so during its a sold during pause it's important I have the pause in there I Know notice that years right? So and again, it is down the bottom as well.

So how do you I would have assumed that this would have worked via the airflow shouldn't have mattered. the there should be a temperature feedback. A thermistor in head to measure the element temperature and you would think the element would be regulated, but you think maybe it's not. We don't know.

We haven't torn this thing down yet. Um, you think that they may actually be that's not a vent? is ever? No, no. Oh literally. just molding.

Oh, he'll open. Did it before. Where's the fan then? Oh, it's there on the other side. One side is molding in one side.

Oh really yeah, it looks blocked to me. I think it opens on the sides. Oh okay, right. Oh yeah.

I think I can see it now. Yeah, it goes through. Okay, so it's got a little squirrel cage fan which sucks in the air and closed it out, but so terribly mounted right? So you think that you heard the fan go off when you put it on here and went off right? but the element remained on. Yep, kept getting hotter.

red hot. Wow Let that be a lesson. Well let's turn it and tear it down and see what's what. All right, let's take this apart and you can see how.

that's just like all melted in there like that and this rotates. There's nothing to hold that in place there. Let's have a look. David What do we got here? There's our little squirrel cage fan and they've got the rubber baby buggy bumper on there which is slightly melted.

It's it's kind of I don't know? No, No. I don't think so. Anyway, they got it on there to vibration isolate it, but then nothing to vibration isolate this end of it. So that's a bit of a that's a bit of a fail and we've got our little Boar down there.

There's nothing I Like it's just a there it is. There's a reed switch. okay, just a little like glass tubular. Reed Switch Classic.

It's yet just some sort of like silicon holding that in. That's no problem. They've actually molded a spot into the case actually for that. Jesus Patrick on here.

look at this. Ah, Spared no expense. Really spectacular. Spared no expense.

a little fan so the fans still connected. Maybe we could measure that, but let's get this board out. Have a squiz. That's how switch.

So what are we got in here? Wow Yep, No, there's no circuitry. Fun. Plus this piece of me is fun. Plus so this yeehuh wasn't fun for David's hot + Hot - the red goes into hot - and the black goes into hot + geniuses.

Absolute geniuses there subvert in our expectations. That's what they do anyway. we've got. okay.

the earth is connected over to here. So yeah, that's you know, me. It's okay. um, and that's actually that's all.

hate. shrink down and there. It doesn't look like you know it's built down to a cost. but it I don't see anything inherently bad in there.

No. I don't see anything inherently bad. So yeah, what went wrong? Um I think the fan seized the all you think the spam. Oh, you think that they maybe the detection didn't happen and the fan broke? Or so you stopped the vibration to me going thing right? right? But there's your temperature sensor.

so it does have temperature sensing inside here. Yeah, so there's your element. so that should have thermally regulated that even if the fan fail. Yeah, and I cut off.

So why why didn't it do that? that is. That is weird. It's not like it's just pumping, you know, power into this element unregulated and then relying on the fan to like, you know, at a constant airflow to keep the temperature it's actually got. Presumably that is a feedback on there.

So that's their. They're like Teflon coated wires I Can feel that they're not. They're like that stiff insulation. They hide high-temperature stuff as you'd need.

Um, so looks okay ish. Why did it fail? Hmm. Hold on to your hat. Oh, we can pull this baby out.

Look at that. Oh, this is it. I Didn't know. No, it's some sort of fiber glossy sheet.

Wow, that's terrible. Muriel Wow look at that. Sigh. That's Repton layer upon layer of this stuff which is just wow.

look that's there. Okay, probably should have worn gloves. Masks have to keep going now. can you press the zoom out key came out and rock it back yet? I Oh my goodness.

Wow There we go. Anyway, there's L So there's our element. such Oh God Wow So we've got looks like a ceramic former in there and it's literally. yep.

it just goes around there. It's got, you know, Nichrome resistance wire. There's the other wire. Oh, and then it goes through.

Okay, so the there's our there's our element. There's our sense in can you zoom into that? Dave David Sorry. hates being called. Dave There, it is.

there. it is. There's our little thermocouple right in the airflow pass, so that's pretty good. I Don't you know that the location of that's alright? So there's nothing inherently wrong in there at all.

This was the only way to clean it up. Well, that really sucks. I'm sure if you're gonna be able to see that, but there's still all these little specks lifts like on my anti-static mat. They this sparkle if you get the light at the right angle.

Ah, stuff is horrid. Alright, so let's take this sucker apart and see what's what. because obviously I'm like four. At this stage.

it seems like something has like its failed to detect and maybe if just if the fan fails and you might think because you just put it back down like it could have been like the contact like the wire has come off now. But of course we just sucked it into the vacuum cleaner. So you know, a little pissant little wire on there really could come off easily. especially with Lee You know the vibration and everything that comes from this fan.

It's not exactly a solid, you know it's not exactly a huge number of strands in that baby, so that could be an issue. So there you go. That's like an eight strand or something like that, but it is quite thin and it's just sort of. You know it could have had some Nicks on it or something like that.

There's no strain relief on that. There's no vibration relief. It's not silicone down, it's not gunked down or anything like that. So I Rick and that's a fail right there.

because if the fan goes and it doesn't end the magnet. which of course as David said it, you often miss this as if it's not like oriented in the road is not rotationally oriented right then the magnet doesn't hit the arethe switch and doesn't always switch off. So if the fan fails and it fails to switch off, then that's probably what happened here. I'd say rather then so it's probably you know like I may be a mechanical sort of fault.

perhaps now I'm just checking the earth in on this here because I'm the Aten one which is not related to this even though it looks very similar I believe it's not related. Anyway, there we go. You can see there that that is connected to mains earth. It's a bit high, but anyway it's there and I believe it was are connected to the neutral inside this one.

There we go. Now it's not physically connected. Earthing and mutual are not joined as they shouldn't be because we use the multiple earth mutual system here. it's tied, they're shorted back together but not in the product back at the the power distribution point.

All right, let's have a look down here. There we go. We are input fused, There you go well and we got standard cord clamp grommet there. a little bit.

how are you doing down here on the transformer Earthing? but at least it's it's there. So yeah, they've just soldered that down. It's not. It's not properly crimped or anything like that.

Wow, it's pretty how you're doing. But anyway I assume that goes up to Clucker. No, it doesn't go directly up the clock. er goes down to then this another tag down here which is also just not crimped or anything.

It's just got multiple stuff connected to the tag and then this note that goes over to the soldering iron one. Where's the earth going to It's that little pissant green one there. So that tiny little that tiny little gauge wire is what's protecting the main element up here, if the elements somehow shorts out to the case up there. Wow, that's not great, is it? Yeah, you're really getting what you pay for here.

So yeah, apart from that pretty standard implementation of a single sided arrangement, we've got a micro in here, so that's doing all the business. What? Samsung Is that? Samsung It's upside down so all the electrons are gonna fall out. Yep, it's a Samsung Well, it's three F 90f, presumably like a flash based microcontroller 94c four I'm gonna have to google that. Wow.

I didn't know Samsung we're in that business. That's weird. Usually these things you you know, one of those Paducah microcontrollers or one of the other. You know, like they're 10-cent micros or something like that.

Or they might even use like an app mill or something like that. It's a bit more upmarket, but Wow And yep, sure enough, if you look at the data sheet for that, it uses the same 88 chipset or whether like, instruction set. whatever that is, it's a Samsung thing. So there you go.

Interesting. So yeah, the rest of this board doesn't. There's still a lot of confidence in you. But anyway, like they're you know they've done a reasonable job.

They're actually gunking down the connectors so they don't come off shame they didn't do the same vibration treatment up in the handle where you actually needed it. But down in here, you know it's built down a price. It's exactly what you'd expect, so it is what it is. Just remove some of the water in there for those playing along at home.

Want to see the trainee or is here? Maybe down in there perhaps. But a couple of 10 turn trimmers in there, A couple of Op amps. Are they three five-eighths? Yep. Love all the through-hole resistors.

They've actually done a decent job to get such a layout with. like the LED display and everything all on a single sided. So yeah, that's off to the PCB designer there, That's it's not a trivial task. There's the other part down in there that looks like a genuine St Joby They got the Reckless at isolation slots there and over here.

Optocoupler across there. You know it's not too bad. Well there you go. This is how desperate the PCB layout person got is that they had to put the the driver chip for the the multiplexer driver or Mayor's at an individual were micro.

not sure TW something? Twi is it. But anyway, they had to put in a slight angle just so that they could sneak snake a few more traces out here in the vertical distance required. That's a bit of a PCB designers trick there. especially like if you see like especially on like video cards or other highly integrated and PC motherboards and stuff like that, you chips at like a 45 degree angle.

That's like you know, instill, instead of the square chip in like that, you'll see it like that at a 45-degree angle because then you can get the traces out from one side and the other like that. It's just easier to round out the traces that way. So they went by Gorillas don't have the hide in there. What are these bloody industrial design has done to me? They're screwed me over because I have only given me this X amount of board space throughout this thing on and they want me to do it on a single sided board to save the extra you know, ten cents or whatever on the bomb cost for this thing.

So I can't fit it even though there is quite a bit of still some extra room down there to route some traces. Anyway, they decided, you know, just go tilt that chippy a little bit and you can get a couple extra traces out. Nice. anyway.

so there's wave soldered that obviously and they just didn't bother to have another sort of mass between pin rubbish over here. They're just happy to waste solder all that and you know it's okay I think the board's they've done a half a reasonable job. Don't even look at the brains of the caps, don't even ask jec what shouldn't have even looked, you know I Don't think that there's anything inherently wrong with this. Apart from the fact that, well, it could be everything to do with this, it could actually be an algorithm Fail on the part of this, because I think ultimately I believe what's happened here.

As I said before, I think the fan failed in some respect. Eva may be the driver for the fan could have failed so it could be an electronic thing or maybe one that liked it. One of the connections that could have broken internally or something like that. I'll actually measure that fan here.

Yep, there you go. I just measured it. The fans actually open circuit so the coils Gonski in that so that's probably what happened to just eventually burnt out I Don't know, you know how it's a Shinzon market fan and it's not that great and it eventually booked it and burnt our cursor David did use this for like like three years. it was his main user I and so it did actually work.

You know, main you some desoldering. They're very workstation so it did get a lot of use and it just eventually burnt out when that burnt out. Even though this has a temperature sensor in it which should thermally regulate this, it maybe it didn't do the job, wasn't enough. Maybe it just couldn't compensate, but it should have like detected that and just shut it off.

It could have done that in software, so there's really no reason when you have a thermocouple control feedback loop in here to regulate the temperature. There's no reason that that micro couldn't have detected the fan fail and the temperature would increase of course, would start increasing them to have to back off on the regulation supplying the power to the element and all that, but it could have been able to detect that and eventually shut it off. So I'm going to say that that's probably what happened is a mechanical fire inside the coil of the fan and combined with maybe some dodgy software in it caused or that issue, that's that's probably the best explanation I can come up with. So we're just following the money here.

Just this is your mains input wire. so it comes here. It turns from blue into black. thanks for that, It's and some blue into black and this goes over to the board here.

so they're terminating the 240 volts into the board and then the other side and then the primary of the transformer plugs in here as well. I'm not sure which ones what doesn't matter and then then the element for the heater, which makes sense the heater for the hot air gun because the holy gun consumes more power than the soldering iron, it requires larger amount of power so that is switched in there and switched with. That has got to be a triac, so we're just checking that it wasn't 240 volts directly across the element and they were using the fan as regulation to regulate the temperature that would be bags in. If the fan fails then there's no feedback to control, but you still be able to sense it and cut it off.

But anyway, yeah, it looks like there that's got to be a triac I'll look that up and so yeah, it looks like they should have had the ability in the software to actually you know to sense that and regulate that and cut it off. By the way, if you're wondering about the fuse rating, six amps here. the primary. Sure enough, if you can see that it is a six amp job'.

So that's 1440 watts or as this hot-air gun is rated at 750 watts in the iron's not much. it's like 50 watts or something. So really the fuse is double the rating of the the element power rating of the hot-air gun. Yeah, Woopsie! Cuz that obviously didn't blow.

Oops, there you go. That's the whip. What is it? I Don't know. Eight, nine, eight D plus I Probably wouldn't recommend this thing I'm even though it's gone.

Oh nice though. Certified holographic sticker on there that it's like a genuine whip thing and you know they look like they're a reasonable maker. If you visit their website you know you might get a bit of confidence, but obviously these things are built down to a price they haven't got the compliant CE Marking on there anyway and they saw during station. yeah I really wouldn't recommend these I Mean if if you've only got the 50 or 60 bucks, you know they're gonna work I mean David was quite happy with it.

Like the actual performance of this thing with the soldering iron and the reflow hot air as well. So you know it it works. But yeah, you get what you pay for anyway. Let us know if you've had an issue like this.

but yeah, genuine meltdown. Which you could have went a lot worse than what it did. You know if David wasn't there, do I save it. just let the Weller thing.

Hmm. Anyway, if you had any issues with these are of the whip products, let us know in the comments down below over on the Eevblog forum. Hope you enjoyed it. Catch you next time.