You know how you never see negative results published? Well, here are some. Recently, I thought that I had used experimentation and logic to find a clever fix for my transiently functional solder station. For the entire day after I soldered in two capacitors, it worked beautifully. On, off. On, off. On, off. And every time I turned it on, the LED display lit up, the soldering iron got hot, and everything was peachy. Until this evening. I turned it on, finally hopeful that I had found an enduring fix and… no. Nothing. No LEDs. No heat. It mocks me.
Once again, with experience borne of many unproductive disassemblies, I tore the solder station apart and poked around. This time, poking the CLKOUT pin didn’t help. I clipped off the cap on the CLKIN. No help. I clipped off the other one, no help. I’m still getting power to the MPU, the oscillator is still oscillating. What gives? I didn’t keep at it long enough to see if it would randomly turn on again at some point.
You’ve won this round, Weller, but I’ll be in Europe next week — where they sell 230V Hakkos, and I’m just about ready to buy one.
Hi Jack, though I haven’t had your experience, mine does have an issue where the display goes to ‘902’. The problem appears to me to be a springless connector on the base. So you plug it in, use it for a while, and then the connectors stop making contact and you have to wiggle the connector to get it to work again. I know it’s been some time since your post and you have probably moved on the Hakkos by now, but I wonder if you have perhaps experienced this and do you have any idea where I could get a replacement for the base connector?
Regards, Guy
Hi Guy,
Nope, I’m still using the Weller as my primary soldering station. My problem turned out to be more a matter of bad wiring out to the workshop in the garage.
If there’s a replacement part available, these guys would have it:
http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/weller/accessories/index.htm
I’d suggest giving them a call.
Good luck,
Jack