Lost $250 on a useless soldering station for my vintage radio project

I was trying to finish restoring an old Hallicrafters receiver from 1958, and I figured I needed a better soldering station. Bought some fancy digital one off eBay for $250. It showed up and the temperature readings were all over the place, like 100 degrees off. Ruined two circuit boards before I figured out it was the station, not me. Now that project's been sitting for 4 months and I'm back to using my old Weller iron. Has anyone else had a bad experience with those hyped up soldering stations?

2 comments

2 Comments

evangarcia5d ago

Did you check if the outlet wiring in your workshop is actually grounded properly? I chased a similar temp drift nightmare for months on my gear and turns out my old house has a bootleg ground that was messing with the thermocouple readings in the station.

fionaw545d ago

That $250 price tag had me cringing before I even finished reading. I learned the hard way with a Hakko clone off Amazon three years ago. The tip temperature would drift 80 degrees when I touched it to a joint, totally useless for fine work on old tube gear. You probably got a counterfeit or a badly calibrated unit. Stick with that old Weller, I run a Weller WES51 I found at a flea market for $40 and it's rock solid. Have you checked the calibration on your iron with a tip thermometer?

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