Hi it's product Review: SL Unboxing Slir Impressions Time We've got a desoldering station vacuum uh, suction desoldering station from an Australian company Rhino Tools.com Pick this up on eBay for about uh for $190 delivered complete with uh, various tips and things like that. So that's really dirt cheap for one of these, uh, proper desoldering uh gun type desoldering stations. Now normally I wouldn't get a cheap soldering tool like this because I'm always telling people you know buy when it comes to soldering tools by decent quality brand, not just some rebadging. I Know this Australian Company Rhino Tools I'm pretty sure they don't design or manufacture this.

it's probably an Oem from somewhere I don't know who uh, the original equipment manufacturer is for this one, but uh, maybe we'll find out by opening the thing up. So yeah, like I've um, done videos on like having a cheap, uh, hot air uh gun for ex you know, a hot air gun for example and well, that's okay cuz not much can go wrong with a hot a gun, but something like a solder n I'm always telling people get a decent quality brand name and also for a d soldering station normally I would recommend that as well cuz these things uh, have to be reliable. They've got to uh, work well. The parts have to be uh, readily available.

um, and you got to maintain them. so you got to buy a good brand. but I'm a tight ass and something like a good ho for example which I'm uh, used extensively I've always had these at the companies I've worked at I've never had one here in the lab cuz I haven't had much uh use for it. Quite frankly, I'm not into the repair side of things so very occasionally when I have to suck out a ship eh I can get by with, you know, just one of these crappy little uh suckers solder Wick uh wide tips for example for my solder and9 and I get by but I thought uh, with the DSA coming up, um I may have to the repair of that I may have to suck out a lot of chips.

So I thought it's about time I got a decent desoldering station but I'm a tight ass to get something like a Hoo 470 or an Hoo 808 for example which are you know, classic industry standard. uh Ultra Super reliable work, well solder uh desoldering stations. They're about 600 plus Dollar in Australia and up and because they're fixed voltage, you can't just import them from the US and well, you can't get them easy secondhand here. So against my better judgment, I Bought a cheapy.

but the good thing about this is that uh, it does have cheap consumables and that's the thing you have to watch out for for D soldering stations. like uh, they've got filters for example. As we'll see, they're only like a dollar or $2 to buy the spare filters for this thing. Uh, the tips are only like 10 bucks or something like that.

Even the entire gun assembly is only about 30 bucks. So really cheap. Uh, consumables available locally for this and spare parts. So I thought I'd give it a go.

Fingers crossed. Anyway, let's go. All right. let's crack this sucker open and uh, the thing about it, it does claim to have better uh suction than say, a Heo 808 for example.

This one claims 600 mm of mercury, which is the uh units of pressure. Rather unusual, but that's what they are. There we go. We got a couple of boxes and um, the heos are like, uh, 500 or something like that.

So uh, from memory. So there. Uh, this one claims to have better, uh suction. but you know, um, yeah, it? it probably does.

I've seen, uh, some videos of this thing in action and it does seem to do the business of course. but uh, whether or not it does that over the long term, cuz these things, yeah, almost certainly work out of the box. you know? Guaranteed it'll do as it claims, but um, long term so we won't be able to get an impression of that from this video of course. But anyway, we'll check out the general quality.

we'll take it apart and instructions don't need that. and uh, here we go. we've got. Look at that.

Oh, it's a bit bigger than I expected. It's actually quite sizable I was uh, hoping it would be like I expected something smaller. it's not heavy at all. it's um 80 WS uh capability.

Um 80 WS Uh, you know heating power on the element which is more than enough? Uh, so it should do the business there. and uh, this will be the gun complete with it'll have two cords on it. Of course There it is. Uh, one is the Um Power Of course for the element and readback the temperature cuz this has a dual display on it.

one for set temperature, one for readback. So presumably it's got the sensor in there and uh, the other. one of course is the air. There it is.

There's the air. uh for the suction, so this has an internal vacuum uh pump in it and uh, heater for the solar in L Feels a bit. feels a bit cheap. there's the trigger for it.

you know, cheap and plasticky. Pretty much what I expected though. So 80 W Desoldering gun looks very similar to the how do you push that? How do you get it open? Let's have a look. Do you have to push it in p Push it up, push it down.

Yes. I Read the manual. you got to push down on. Ah, there we go.

I just didn't press hard enough and it pops out our tube out which collects our solder. There we go, it's a bit Rough and Ready Um, but yeah I mean these all operate very similar to the uh, um, you know the heos and most other uh Brands They got a filter in the back. of course the suction comes through the back so they've got an o-ring on the back there. Um, you should be able to get o-ring replacements for that of course, cuz the uh, vacuum suction in this is only as good as the O-ring seal on there.

Um, sometimes you know if you really want to improve it, you can apply some uh, grease or something like that inside there and that can, um, help with the seal. and then they've got a spring here which helps, uh, capture uh, the solder. Of course, because when the solder gets sucked in and the reason it's uh, metal like this is when it gets suck, the molten solder gets sucked in and then it touches the metal and the heat dissipates. Of course it cools down very quickly once it touches this metal and then it gets captured in there and you take that out and you clean the whole thing out after.

um, uh, you've been using it for a little while, but these things have to be maintained. So really, you know the way that all this sort of stuff operates and uh, the reliability of all the parts in here. a key. so this thing does feel very plasticky and uh, cheap.

I'm not that impressed with it, but for the price I I Wasn't expecting, uh to be impressed. Uh, really. But the good thing is it's really, really light. I mean I could weigh that, but yeah, it doesn't weigh much at all.

So fatigue for long-term use um, shouldn't be an issue at all with it. and with this I got one spare main filter down here for the main um, the input to the unit. You generally don't have to replace that often because it doesn't get through the filter which is in the back of here like this. So they give you three of those.

and I've got two different size tips I believe are 0.8 mm, 1 mm, and 1.3 So those three size tips should be more than adequate for all the jobs. And then I've got three different size tip cleaners here because uh uh, you don't always just have to take this out to clean you, just uh, clean the shaft and things like that. occasionally just to get some gunk out and these look, uh, pretty good. There you go.

We got some nice looking nerling on the end of those I'm sure that helps out. Nice attention to detail I like that. I'm not really impressed with that seal around there. You can see the O-ring doesn't actually go all the way into the tube even though I'm pushing that in.

I Yeah, I don't know I don't get a good vibe from that. it is. This thing is really you know, engineered down to a price and it is specifically branded Rhino Tools and the model number is ZD 985 not RT 985 as I said before. So we should be able to find uh, this? Well, that particular model number under many different brands I'm sure.

Well, what do you know? I Googled ZD 985 and what comes up first? the Eev blog Forum somebody's already done uh, some tear down uh, photos and a little uh review of this thing and U yeah they said it's you know it's decent for the price us as a switch mode uh Transformer inside. hence the lightweight I was very uh, surprised at the lightweight of this thing. but it is, um, as I said, quite. um, you know, quite a large unit.

Compare it with my um Attn, um 858. uh, hot air. A station here is significantly deeper, significantly higher, significantly wider. but of course, uh, you'd kind of expect that cuz this does a little bit more than that.

Now the first thing I noticed this thing just sits in this plastic holder like this. You get a nice little sponge tray here. That's all right. but uh, this thing is just held into this plastic here with this clip and I put that in and well, okay, it holds in place.

but then when you go to put the gun in and put pressure on that, if I just put the barest pressure I can just bend that flat that is. That is hopeless. Really, that is just just awful quality. Um, that is not going to last at all.

You know you have to be very gentle not to put pressure on that and just bend down and that thing will end up just snapping off and well. yeah, not happy with the holder on this thing at all. Very cheap, but hey, for my 180 uh bucks? I'm not going to complain too much I guess I'm not going to use this. I was so I wouldn't flat out just for that sort of thing.

and the you know, the plasticky feel of this thing. I don't think it's going to be good for really high volume, uh use. So if you're in, you know, a proper repair environment where you're sucking stuff every day. You know, spend the money, get a real brand name, but it should be adequate, hopefully for my uses.

So let's crack it open. and by the way, no, you can't put this on either side. It's only got the slots in there. nothing on the other side.

not jeel purpose. Ah why come on. could have at least made it duwal sided. Just a quick check to see if the tip is uh Earth here.

not all of them are. no, this one's not. Even though I can see a an earth wire inside there. the green and yellow Earth wire strapped onto that.

no, um it's not I mean that doesn't mean anything really. Some soldering tools are. some soldering tools aren't you? just what need to be aware of it? Let's take a look inside this thing. We got two screws on the top, um two on either side here and should Tada just pop off all very flimsy look at that front panel.

There flimsy plastic construction. no metal. I mean you know we got a metal base on the thing, a powdercoated metal base. but that's about it.

So really, not much. uh doing there at all. but you can see there's our Main's input. We do have Earth wire going over here.

it is uh uh, a shake proof washer on that? Yeah, I think they do, um, going over to the uh metal, um shield on the switch mode. uh Transformer in here as I said. um a bit surprised I expected sort of a linear uh Transformer but eh, you know, whatever. Here's our pump.

Obviously down here, there's our motor. Not sure I'm you know I'm not going to go in there and take that apart, but you know I'm not sure of the quality of uh pump motors and stuff like that. but anyway, um, I'm sure it does the business. and and not sure what's tacked on the back here that's rather unusual or held in place with cable tires.

And we've got a front panel display board which is nothing special really. it's just got a microcontroller down in there. Not going to do a full tear down on this thing. Not that fussy, but you know it's okay.

They've cable tied things together. sort of. Does you know it? It does the job. I guess for the price.

but yeah, it would have been nice to get a nice, you know, solid metal shazzy on this thing, but unfortunately not and no surprises on the microcontroller down in there. Just a uh Jelly Bean 805 on. They don't have to pay the royalty on that sucker, saving every last scent they can here. And although there's no sound dampening around the motor here, they have actually installed it on rubber.

compliant. uh, anti vibration? um mounts there. so that's a bit of attention to detail. I'm not sure how uh uh loud this thing is.

um I guess we'll find out when we switch it on, but uh yeah, they've at least done the basics there. I'm not sure if that is going to, you know, rattle against the two metal. uh Parts there. There's a bit of rubber coming out here as part of the seal the top seal in there so that could be touching that.

But anyway, if you do get vibrational mode issues of that, you know, touching the metal in there, you maybe could put a bit of rubber down in there. Perhaps to maybe AC quiet that thing, but we'll find that out when we. Power It Up You probably can't see it, but they've uh, grounded earthed the outer Shield of the um main connector go into the hand piece but the actual ground itself is that black wire in there which actually goes up and into the uh output of the power supply down in here. so as we saw it's not actually Main's Earth reference on the tip itself I tried to get that connector open there, but uh, it wouldn't budge I'm not sure if it's just po if it's potted or elasti inside or just whether or not it's a very tight fit but it seems uh, it does seem rugged enough that's for sure.

and likely as we saw because they're are gone to the trouble to run the Earth wire through to the casing of that, then the outer. then they probably got shielded Cable in here going up to the heater element and of course that's important cuz this is going to be a triy out controlled uh heating element of some arrangement so you don't want this thing. uh, this cable, this huge antenna cable spewing out all that RFI So they've done the shielding right and sorry, but I'm not going to tear down the power supply in here I can see two main Fielder caps down in there. 2200 microfarads uh, 25 volts.

can't make out the uh brand of those. They are sastic together so that's a bit of attention to detail. but yeah, I'm not quite. uh, sure of the quality of the power supply.

I'm just you know I don't want to take this whole thing apart to find out. This little black box on here is the uh pump. uh, motor drive here so they've got these two wires go off down here to through the uh cable through to the trigger down in there. So me, internal construction quality, you know.

I mean for the price, it probably passes mustard, but uh, not much more. Let's switch it on here and see what we get. Nice green backlight. Po's on quick and there we go.

There's our dual display. uh, set the temperature. it's actually uh, heater heater on waiting? no, it's not. uh, it's not heating up at all.

and uh, set 226. you can switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius for you. Yanks and uh, the screen looks good at this angle. Really quite nice, but you bring it up and it's going to vanish and the bottom angle as well.

Yeah, pretty horrible. It just Fades out sideways. Yeah, it's You know it's okay, but yeah, not the world's best. LCD that's for sure.

It goes from a minimum of 160 up to 480. They' actually stuck the sponge down in there so it doesn't come out. This is the cheapest, crappiest, um, solder sponge. Well, I think I've ever seen.

Oh, that's yeah, that's just hopeless really. And I do enjoy a new sponge. It's just quite satisfying to, uh, pour the water in there and watch that sucker rise. Woohoo! Uh folks, we have a real problem here.

I mean I've got this thing on and uh, you know it sucks or tries to, but of course the uh tip hasn't uh uh. it's got solder on the end of it so it's just, uh, um, not open yet. but uh, that it's not heating up. What heater on? Yeah, great.

There's no protection on that, but um, heater on on waiting. There's an error. Uh, there's actually I can see like an error mark error display there. It's not showing any error, but it's not heating up at all.

Why? What a heap of crap. Watch this. It resets when I pull the bloody trigger. What the frig, You got to be me.

And if my hunch is right, that's because it's of course sealed and uh, if we pop the seal off the end so there's no uh, so it's open, it probably won't happen. That'll be my guess. Yep, there you go. but it's push that in.

get look that nice seal on there and the thing resets, it's like there's you know backf from the motor or something shutting down the supply and and resetting the thing if it if the motor's working too hard. Unbelievable. and I opened it back up and you know what? I See the problem? Look at that that wire has come off the output connector because this whole thing bends like this. just bends and flexes like that.

What that is piss poor. Look at that. It's just come off the Um handpiece connector in there. Unbelievable.

And on second thought. I Really don't like the case construction I Had the captive nuts in here fall out of these things and well, yeah, they do at least have a machine screws and nuts in there, but it's sort of. You know, there's nothing. Actually, there's just friction stopping that whole front panel from just falling off.

I Don't like it. All right? After I've done a repair on my piece of brand new desoldering tool. Um, let's power it on and see if it works. We expect a fresh nozzle like this.

We expect a bit of, uh, smoke to come up off it, and uh, 25 heating up? No hell Oh yeah. Yep. there we go. Jeez, not the world's fastest, but uh yeah.

certainly not the world's fastest creep, creep, creep. So if you just want to do one um, joint, you know, or a couple of joints, you want to just switch it on. Eh This ain't the Beast that is. Wow, that is dog slow.

What's that? I Can hear the cows coming home. sure if you can see that, but we've got our smoke wafting up there. We expect that as Solda melts and uh wow yeah, that is unbelievably slow. Come on.

suck through. Nope. it's not sucking through the tip. Fail.

Have to give it a poke with the cleaner. I Think there we go. Jeez, there wasn't much force in. Oh, there we go.

Yeah, we're up and running. Woohoo! And the temperature's not dipping if I leave that on. But let's uh, see, let's well desolder it. Try what it's intended to do.

All right. I've got my a nice big uh through hle board here from a UPS I think it uh was from anyway uh but some nice big thermal Mass uh components in here we'll try and suck out. uh these Transformers big inductor down there some Reay you know we got a D9 down there and then we've got some dip packages over here we can uh, desol us all right? let's give it a go. I've got it set to 300 Celsius Of course the temperature you need to set it at.

it's going to depend on the thermal mass of your pads, your thermal mass of you know, your thermal recovery of your uh gun and your nozzle and everything else. You know there's lots of factors involved so there's no one set temperature. You know you I can advise you to use these things. That really is trial and error, but suffice it to say, the lower temperature, the better you can get away with then you're less risk of lifting pads and things like that.

So anyway, let's get this sucker on here and uh, let's try out these I think I got my 1 mm tip on here I'm not sure does it fit, It fits and there we go. Give it a bit of a wiggle and whoa. Straight out there we go. No problems at all.

We are working against gravity here, of course. Um, we're sucking the solder up, but that that melts pretty darn quick. That's a 300 here. Sorry.

I'm trying to work around the camera. It's not the best, but that's just put it on there. Wait a second, give it a bit of a wiggle and oh, no problems whatsoever. I Rather like that.

Yep, that does the business. Excellent. Just like any Hio I've used, you'll see that our component is just falling out there. There it is.

Bang. Just dropped right out. Beautiful. Not a a problem that was a reasonably, you know reasonable size thermal.

Mass Um, pad there. So yeah. I Off the bat. I'm I'm quite impressed with that.

It does what it claims and uh yeah, in terms of wattage and suction going against gravity there, not bad at all. So we finished that off there. I think that's our inductor, our common mode choke there and uh, this sucker is only set to 300. so I'm really quite happy with that and that should just, uh, pull out from the bottom.

Yeah, it just drops out. No problems whatsoever. Taada. Okay, we've got ourselves a little D9 here with some pads and really is incredibly quick.

Sorry, it's not the easiest trying to work around the camera here to get that off, but uh, it's almost. Oh there we go. Lost a pad, Lost a pad, folks. That's what happens.

I think we lost one so got to be very careful. Don't apply too much when you're putting it down and then wiggling it around like that. don't apply too much pressure. otherwise you do or you will lift the pad.

Oh no, we didn't lift the pad there. I'm just looking through the lens. From my other angle, the uh light showed that I lifted a pad but I didn't and now we've got the uh yeah I'm not going to be able to get over the top of that, but let's try and see what it does. if we get near the edge of that see I just marked that board there.

Try and get in there and that's not bad, but of course we're not putting it right over the thing so we can't expect to suck all the solder out of that. No, that's not going to work. This is where your solder wicker for unusual shaped Um pads. You unusual shaped legs like that that you can't get your round nozzle over.

You're probably better off with your um solder Wick or with you or just uh, heating it up and then wiggling it out once you've got all these off. All right, let's try and drop out this uh Transformer here. So I think my tip just fits over this so you know something like a 1.3 mm tip is probably going to do the business for most things and that's just really. SU that out very nicely very quickly.

I Am impressed with the thermal capacity of this thing. It seems to easily do the business. Let me tell you. and the vacuum? It's pretty good working against gravity here, sucking it up cuz sometimes you know if you're really desperate, you might need to hold the board upside down and uh, do it that way to uh, let gravity help you so the solder falls out but there you go.

Beautiful and ta there it is too easy. Okay, let's try a To220 heat sink like this. We have some pins for the heat sink and also the pins for the To220, which will be a piece of cake. Let's see if we can drop the whole thing out somehow I Don't think we're going to get over the pin on that.

Yeah, my tip isn't big enough. so this is the heat sink. I've currently got it set to Uh 325 and uh, so not hugely hot and so the heat sink itself isn't working too well. Of course we'll suck the legs of that.

Okay, they're like instant, but we'll probably have to turn the wick up to I Don't know. Let's go to 380 or something like that because we can't get a big enough tip. Well, we don't have a big enough tip to go around it. So let's wait until that heat pad heats up and uh, try and suck around it.

No, of course we can hold the heat sink on the bottom. Something like that, we're probably better off. might even put some solder back on there, but we're probably better off just heating the whole thing up and then pushing it, giving it a little push all the way through rather than trying to suck it. Give it a push.

There we go. Gone. Retrieved intact. perfectly.

Look at that, we can reuse those and I'm going to see if we can actually drop out this uh Plcc package here. Let's let's give it a go see how long it takes there you go. That took under 3 minutes to suck that out, even with a bent pin and some you know little bit of wobbly work cuz I was all standing up. not in the best position, but there you go.

That worked. an absolute treat and virtually no Dam damage whatsoever. So that was done at 300. C Had no issues that's beautiful and a dip chip.

This dip package isn't going to come out easily. It's going to depend on how big the Sal the Uh holes are. the whole size on the board compared to the size of the pin. Usually you know if they're quite small, you can actually get them at attached.

Um, even if you suck all the solder out, you know the pins can be touching. So that's not a fault of the solder sucker at all. That's just the dimensions of this particular board. If we get our uh, screwdriver under there, we can.

Actually, this one is pretty easy. We don't have to wiggle individual pins, just needed a little bit of a crack there to, uh, lift that up And yep, we're out. And there you have it. A perfectly reusable Tl074.

Yeah, the pins are going to have some, um, extra sold a code on them, but look at that. almost like a bought one and there's no, um, you know, damage to the leads or anything like that. There's no thermal, very little thermal stress was done to the chip. Certainly no.

uh, thermal damage. So that very reusable. so you could easily suck all the parts off this uh, board or any board. Uh, you want through whole stuff and uh, put these parts back in your parts bin to reuse them.

I Mean, uh, you know, not as good as brand spanking new ones? Not absolutely guaranteed, but certainly uh, you know, good enough. And certainly when you're in a pinch I Think we need ourselves a header socket. What do you think? Winner. Even sucking out electrolytic caps like this takes a couple of seconds.

Even at 300 C on large ground plane like that, Not a problem, Just pop straight out. This is a Nipon Chemicon. Uh, electrolytic capacitor. Certainly reusable If this Uh unit hasn't seen much stress, that'll definitely go in.

The parts draw. Let's try our handed: a big aluminium heat sink like this with some To220 devices on it. unfortunately. I Don't think, um, our nozzle is going to be wide enough.

uh for the pins on this, so uh, but we can certainly get around it and drop it out just like we did on the T2201. There you go. In the end, the biggest problem there. I Forgot to take off the plastic clip on the top of the heating I Was wondering why it wasn't falling out D But there you go.

Um, beautiful. We got ourselves. um, three mosfets there. certainly reuse those and uh, they're the large pins that went in.

Of course my tip couldn't go over that I didn't have it. You know you probably need like a 2 and2 mm tip or something like that. round one to go over the top of that, but just sucking around it and then just uh uh and then putting the heating up the pad first and then putting the nozzle down and just pushing the heat sink. uh, the pin through not and then sucking out the solder.

Not a problem, like you know, less than a minute. Done. There you go. That's quite a decent little swag of, uh, very reusable components in next to no time at all.

Would have been a lot more difficult and a lot more uh, you know, time consuming to and more damaging to take them out with my uh, traditional solder and iron. You got to wiggle one pin, wiggle the other, and all the all the solder sucker. This just makes it so easy for salvaging parts and things like that. it's worth it's waiting gold If you're into res salvaging stuff, let alone um, you know, if you have to do rework a lot.

and how about the X power connector on a multi-layer motherboard, let's give it a go. There you go. That was an absolute piece of cake. although not as easy as the Uh two layer board because there's thermal capacity in the inner layers in there and it depends how they've done the the PCB layout uh, designer has done the thermal relieves to the pads and stuff like that.

So on a multi-layer board like this, you might turn the temperature up to say 350 and you might leave it there for a little bit longer just to penetrate to the inner layers. But yeah, um, I didn't fail on that. That one just dropped straight out. And we'll try some of the capacitors on these large ground planes here.

but once again, also going into the Uh multi layer down in there as well. so we'll have to leave it there for a little bit and uh, then give it a bit of a wiggle and no, didn't get it. You really have to leave that there for quite a bit longer. longer than you would for a double layer board, that's for sure.

So that didn't work that great at 350. So I'm going to turn this up to say uh, 380 and uh, give that another go because obviously we're connected to the top plane there. it's probably an inner plane and uh, yeah, we really have to, uh, really have to heat that up so you want to leave it there and then give it a good, good wiggle. and yep, I think we got that one.

t that one is going to pop out. So yeah, we did have to leave it there for a fair bit longer and there is, of course, the chance of, um, heating up the components more than uh, you would on a double-sided board. but uh, certainly. um, this, uh, multi-layered motherboard really didn't present any problems at all to this sucker.

It's still got more thermal capacity left in it, that's for sure. Oh, and by the way, the uh cable on this thing. um, it is fairly fairly. uh Supple so it you know it doesn't really, uh, twist or you know, drag you around the place.

So I you know I don't mind that at all. You know you don't want a real big, heavy, stiff, uh cable that doesn't really Bend with your iron cuz that can be annoying. And before you, uh, turn the power off and put this thing away, just get your cleaning tool in there and just unclog that whole thing like that. So after sucking off all those parts there, that is what we're left with in terms of the filter.

Look at that. um, not, You know it's It's still usable for quite some time. There we go. We can just peel that off and uh, of course some of the filter material comes with it of course.

and uh, but it's still, uh, certainly usable after you just peel off that top there. and that is almost like a bought one. So you can use these a few time. I mean I I could have kept using this.

Of course, you would just keep using this until uh, you're It's obvious that your sucking power is going down, but we can certainly reuse that filter. It's just like putting in a new one. So while we have a reasonable amount of solder in there, there's uh, this can, certainly, uh, take a lot more than that. You know, probably like, uh, you know, 2/3 full or something before.

uh, we're going to, you know, stop getting decent suction. I mean I didn't notice any drop in suction. uh, right at the in there as I got at the that I actually got from the start. So really, you know, not a problem.

Um, we can suck out probably every component on that board. and uh, with you know, without having to clean this once. The best way to get that solder out is just to sort of, you know, crack and loosen the spring at the back like that, and hopefully that should, uh, allow the molten solder to well drop out of that thing. Well, it will eventually might need.

There We go there it is. Tada So there you have it. That's the Rhino tools ZD 985 Almost certainly available in um, you know, other brands, probably a similar part number or maybe a different part number. If you do find this Zack model under a different part number, please leave it in the comments so we can add it in there.

But well, what's the verdict? Well, you know you get what you pay for. Uh, pretty much. um, in terms of build quality. I mean look, it's straight out of the box.

It failed I'm not sure the wire popped off I'm not because I didn't power it up out of the box I'm not sure if it was me taking it apart and maybe you know, bending that front panel a bit that caused that solder joint to come off, but it shouldn't have cracked I Mean you know that's it. should have taken that easily. So obviously it was a dodgy solder Joint inside this thing. which is a shame because, well, that just left a bad taste in my mouth.

But um, in terms of well, you know the build quality inside is adequate. Apart from that issue, um I Don't like the stand at all. The stand is just H It's just flimsy. This feels flimsy, but it is lightweight and it seems to work.

I Was a bit worried about the seal around here, but um, in terms of suction. of course, in terms of thermal capacity and suction, this thing is as good as the heos I've used. um it it. You know it really is whether it continues to be that good.

um given time I Don't know, um, but you know if you keep the things uh, serviceable. And as I said, the uh replacement parts for this are very cheap. You know, a dollar for the filter and other stuff and even this holess gun assembly is only like 30 bucks? um Australian so you know, pretty damn. uh, cheap So well.

I'm certainly not going to give it a thumbs up for build quality, but in terms of functionality, for under $200 for a D soldering station, it does the job. I mean I didn't even have to turn the week up I was doing most of that. At 300, this will go up to 480. Um, the thermal capacity.

The temperature on the display didn't seem to drop uh much at all. The thermal capacity seem to be, you know, more than adequate for uh, you know, a decent uh, chunky um size board with some heat sinks and uh, things like that basic um through hole, uh work that you can expect to do with this thing. So yeah? I I Don't you know? Overall, it's an adequate it's you know it's a thumb sideways. it's it's adequate for the job.

I Wouldn't give it a thumbs up purely because of the uh, you know, the quality control issue in there with the solder joint? That's no good at all. Maybe I just got a dud unit. you know, the Eev blog curse? um, but yeah. I mean for my use? Um, it.

It should be pretty good here in the lab. um, you know, long term I'll let you know how it goes, but jez I I Was quite impressed with the performance of this thing. thermal capacity and suction. Not an issue whatsoever equal to or outperforms the uh, heos and the paces that I'm used to.

So pretty happy for my money. apart from that issue where I had to fix the bloody thing. Anyway, there you go. oh you know I tried to be a tight ass and well, yeah, I got tight ass issues didn't I Now I haven't uh surveyed the market uh for these things extensively.

but is there a competing uh one like this? Um, you know in this form factor I Think you can get like a combined station and soldering iron? uh I don't recommend those of course I Still recommend buying a good quality uh, soldering iron but uh for a d soldering gun which usually doesn't get too much work as I said, for the occasional use, this thing should do just fine. but if you uh, you know, had a you know, a repair house, you're using this thing every day, don't get one of these buy you know, a proper heo or some other no and reputable uh brand. They're just going to last much longer in my experience. So anyway, if you want to discuss it, jump on over to the Evev blog.

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