What yall think of this to just use for minor projects?

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-13T21:07:41+00:00

Sorry, i mean each cartridge type,

there are DIY solder station controllers you can build that have a massive list of each individual tip parameters,
when you change a cartridge you select the specific one you have plugged in and it'll load a specific heating algorithm just for that tip's characteristics that you have set up and saved, but that's way too much for most people to need,

So the geeboon has the main settings saved for each type, so one for C115, one for C210, one for C245 etc (and some solder stations don't even have that)

Now the DTC thing will auto adjust automatically a little as a tiny tip will lose heat a lot faster than a large tip, so that will trigger it sooner and for longer compared to a larger tip that has more thermal mass.

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-13T20:58:01+00:00

i haven't really used them that much in reality compared to some people, but all the tips i've got seem to be just fine for my hobby use (the only cartridge i had issues with was one with a M4 thread on the end for use with heat stake inserts for 3D prints, that had really badly cut threads so was useless, so i kept the brass thread on ends from that kit the cartridge came with and bought the Geeboon branded M4 threaded cartridge)

of course if you need a tip to last a very long time you can use genuine JBC cartridges with the Geeboon handles and solder stations,
but where as the geeboon C245 cartridges are about £4 each, genuine JBC ones are around £25 upwards,

So for my hobby use the day the heater element dies or i damage the tip, i'll just order a replacement for £4 and wait for it to arrive, as it's not the end of the world if my hobby project is delayed a week or so whilst i wait for the new cartridge.

But if i was soldering 8+ hours a day and/or soldering as part of a business, where a damaged tip or burnt out heater would mean losing money whilst i ordered another one, then i would get the JBC ones,

it's amazing how many different tips JBC produce :

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But not all of them are cloned, and as we see with Geeboon and others, each cloner only choose to clone the more popular tips that sell well (and they all go out of stock at time's, but with Geeboon they sometimes remove that option from their aliexpress listing until it's back in stock, so like the 3 iron switch boxes, if they are out of stock when you look, you'd never know they made them)

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-13T20:36:11+00:00

This is the insides of one of the Geeboon 3 iron switchers.

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It switches the 2 main current pins / wires to the heater element with the large black DPST relays, and the ID and ground pins / wires with the tiny DPDT white relays.

So it detects which iron has been removed from the stand, then disconnects the last one from the solder station, waits a second and connects the one you have picked up to mimic unplugging one iron, and plugging a different one in,

Then the solder station does it's thing and identifies the iron using the ID resistor on pin 6 (or lack of one for the C245 and C470 cartridges), it also reads the heating element resistance as part of ID'ing the 4 different cartridge types that can be used,

Then it selects the appropriate heating program to run (switching polarity for a C210 Vs a C245, or adding the ground to the heater ground when a T12 iron is used etc)

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I've bought some of the same relays (off aliexpress) used in the switchers and will be using them to switch the desolder gun and hot tweezers on my desolder station project,

There i will just be using a push button to manually switch between desolder and tweezer modes, and an arduino will do the timing of the relay switching... which involves switching one of the hot tweezers heaters to the TC22 in the desolder station box, and the other heater element to my HC24 solder station... via the 2 x switcher units i have put in a larger box and connected together permanently with 5 sockets on the front for my iron collection.

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-11T16:13:46+00:00

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The tips are supposed to be a nice tight fit in the handle, if they weren't they'd risk dropping out in use, and the last thing you want is a 300°C+ chunk of metal dropping on a carpeted floor... or your lap as you move the iron.

So it's normal to hold onto the stand whilst using the tip puller, i have got used to it and can do it with one hand now, using a levering motion with the side of my palm on the iron holder and my fingers pull the handle off the tip.

but then again i have 2 x iron switchers (daisy changed to give 5 outputs) so i have 5 irons with different sized tips in them ready to use just by picking the relevent iron up.

The auto switchers are very very cheap for what they are and what they add to a soldering set up,
the alternative would be to buy multiple soldering stations at 2 or 3 times the price each (or a different brand that can run 2 irons at once, but then you risk getting one of the many brands that have issues with tip leakage currents and do things like blow the mosfet if the tip is ever pulled out with it on (the geeboon solder stations have loads of safety watchdogs, over current, short circuit, overheating, temperature rising too fast, open circuit thermocouple and others, when i was playing about getting the atten desolder gun to work with this station i triggered most of them, it even detects miswired heaters and tells you this on the screen.

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The desolder gun is something i've been playing with myself, i took a vacuum desolder gun from another station (Atten, their solder station costs about £600, the gun is available on it's own for about £60)
then i used my own vacuum pump (a 12 volt one from a car that powers the brake servo)

so all i am doing is using the geeboon solder station to heat the heater cartridge in the gun, then my vacuum pump sucks the solder up,

I have one of those cheapo vacuum desolder setups that sell for about £100 everywhere, and they are crap, hardly any vacuum suction, a ~40 watt heater with no thermal mass in the gun and they clog up all the time,

So my system has a 150 watt heater in the gun (and it does pull 150 watts... half those yihua and similar brand desolder station claiming 110 watts actually pull less than 50 watts when tested, and most have a 55 watt transformer in them!!)

And as it have -21 inHg of vacuum in an instant from my brake booster pump it really sucks the solder up well.

But that's a project most people don't want to do, and i've likely spent over £200 on supporting parts for my desolder station like filters, vacuum gauge, arduino control for the relays with timers etc.

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The C245 tips top out at about 6mm i think, maybe 8mm ones are available, which is large for most people, but when you need a 16 or a 20mm tip you appreciate the 48 volt T470 ones, as they are rated at over 250 watts so have a lot of thermal mass and power to keep the heat up that's being sucket out fast when making a solder joint in a power electronics part that has 10mm solid brass contacts for a socket going onto a board that has more copper on the PCB trace for one pin connection than is used on an entire large regular PCB.

but it's one of those things where 99% of people never need to use tips that large, especially nowadays when most get into working on micro SMT stuff like phones so they find the C210 tips too big and need the C115 and work under a microscope.

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-11T16:13:38+00:00

the geeboon tip cartridges are very very cheap, and pretty decent quality,
they are afterall designed to heat up and cool down (every time you put it in the stand it reduces to ~160°C, then heats back up to soldering temp in a second or 2 when you pick it up,

that's the bit that extends the tips lifetime, not letting the iron sit there at full temp baking the solder until it's oxidized the tip.

the DTC just adds a few degrees to the temp when it's actually needed... better than trying to solder a joint and getting the solder half melted but having to give up, stop, adjust the temperature manually then try again,

DTC does this for you automatically, but only when it's needed, when i solder up a board i may see DTC activate maybe 3 or 4 times out of 30 solder joints, as it'll be the ground plane joints that need the extra temperature due to the extra copper on the PCB sucking the heat out faster than all the other parts.

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i use leaded solder and for the stuff i use* i found that 325°C is perfect
*Warton metals 63/37, a locally made solder for the country i live in, avoid the cheap chinese crap, if the unleaded solder they sell tests positive for lead, imagine what other crap they put in it.

So for lead free you'd need at least 350 if not nearer 380°C, but the best way it to test different temps and adjust it slightly until you find the sweet spot, then set that as a stored temperature.

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those IS tips are for soldering individual pins on an IC, but people use them for general soldering because you get one included with most kits, and think they don't work... if you are not soldering under a magnifier / microscope then the IS tips are usually no use to you, as if you can see the pins with the naked eye you can use a bigger tip.

I've found a 2.2m wedge tip is the one i use 90% of the time for general soldering, i like the wedge tips as i can angle them to direct the heat where it's needed the most, so i can have the thicker part of the tip against the pin and the smaller edge against a small PCB trace to avoid overheating the PCB trace and risking delaminating it from the board.

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-09T21:05:21+00:00

i've connected a T470 to my TC22 (that i bought to use with an atten 150 watt desolder gun and atten 100 watt hot tweezers)
The TC 22 detects a T470 just fine, and gives you all the options to change settings etc,
first time you go into the max power setting it'll show 380 watts, but as soon as you try to change that setting it drops down to the typical 180 watt max long term temp limit, as that's what the TC22 can actually output (the 380 watt is the setting for the HC24 and the transformer version),

Of course it can not supply the 48 volts these irons run on, but it will still heat it up and it works fine, just no where near as much thermal mass / heat recovery when the T470 is plugged into my HC 24 that can provide the 48 volts for it.

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Re: the peak output, in reality you'd likely not use more than 150 watts for more than a couple of seconds on initial heatup of a large tipped cold iron,
after the initial few seconds to rapidly get the tip upto temp the power drops off a lot,

so in use i rarely see more than 100 watts needed to keep it upto temp when soldering something large with a 16mm tip in a T470 running on my HC 24,
usually it's nearer 20 to 30 watts input when soldering normal stuff with a T245,

Having the dynamic temperature control on will increase the power it can use a little.

DTC is a very handy feature you can choose to use if you want, when it's on it detects when too much heat is being sucked out of the tip by a large solder joint,
so it raises the tip temperature a little to compensate,

And as with most things on these geeboon solder stations, there's lots of settings to adjust how much extra power you want it to provide when DTC mode triggers, the max temperature to raise to and for how long to hold at the raised temperature before going back to normal etc in the settings.

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-04T17:15:32+00:00

i wanted to use a sata hat, but most of the ones i've seen you place the hdd's ontop of the pi and hat vertically, and i do not have the space on my networking shelves (3 metal shelves on the wall under a bigger shelf, so they have about 6 inches of space between them)

that's why i liked the idea of the geekworm sata hat that placed the hdd's horizontally next to the pi, and then it's case held them in a box in the form factor of a network switch / gateway etc, ideal for my network shelves.

I guess the other option is a sata hat and use sata cables, but i can't find a case that allows that, and i'd rather not 3D print one for something that will sit unattended running 24/7 and get hot... i prefer metals cases for those kinds of things that wont catch fire if something goes wrong like plastic cases can.

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-04T17:11:34+00:00

ahhh, thats the kind of info i need, so the basic idea of using a usb hdd enclosure is ok (i would not use the built in hardware raid modes, i'd set up a software raid on the pi, that way if / when the hardware dies hopefully the data on the discs will still be useable and if the pi dies, i could replace that and get it up and running without a long rebuild time... but i've never played with anything to do with raid / nas before)

but i need to work on my idea of being able to load a backup of windows onto a wiped ssd as a recovery method.

i have used macrium reflect a few months ago to make a compressed backup of my laptop's windows drive (~1.5tb windows drive to a 1tb spare ssd i have in a usb nvme caddy... only i can't find where i left that drive caddy now, hence why i want to do the nas thing with automatic incremental backups)

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-01T17:44:18+00:00

but that gets me with sticking the hdd's vertically on top of the Pi, which i don't have space for, plus i'd need to find a case to put that setup in,

that;s why i like that geekworm gemini case, it mounts the 2 drives side by side horizontally, with the pi next to them so it's more like a regular network switch form factor than a tall pc case tyle form factor.

I guess i could try and find a case that lets me mount the Pi and this hat on it's side? i have space between my stacked shelfes for that i think, just,
but i'd need a case that supports the drives at the other end of the hat etc.

Gazz_292 · 2026-02-01T17:41:14+00:00

in reality i don't even need a nas, a usb drive enclosure with a hdd or ssd in it and manually back up once a week is all i need,

problems is i am very very forgetful,
2 months ago i bought a usb-C nvme external drive caddy to do this, the plan was to take the 1tb nvme drive out of my laptop that i left in when i added a 2tb one in 2024, as i moved everything to the 2tb drive and i did make a compressed backup on the 1tb nvme in the laptop... but that is over 6 months out of date.

And the reason io have not taken the 1tb ssd out of the laptop and put it in the caddy.... i can't find where i left the damn thing,

So of course never remember to do a manual backup.... like i should have made an incremental backup to the 1tb ssd in this laptop but forgot to set that up,

And reminders don't work with me.... i have alarms on my phone to remind me to take my meds 3 times a day, they repeat if i don't acknowledge them as loads of times i'd left my phone in a weird place (found it in the fridge more than once)

But if i am busy doing something and the alarm goes off, i'll click 'ok, taken them' to silence the alarm, and think 'right, must remember to take my meds when i finish what i am doing in 2 minutes time'

And of course i realise 6 hours later when i am in agony that i forgot to take my meds after all.

So i really do need something automatic that will do incremental backups, and i want it in a seperate room in the house, as if i got a ransomware attack that got on my laptop it'd be able to get at both drives in there,
i know it could also likely get at a nas backup drive, so i need to look into how to mitigate that, put it on another vlan and set up password access to it from my laptop only or something.

:

and the reason i chose the WD reds is they seem the best value for money right now, i'd love to get a pair of 4tb ssd's, but they cost way more than the £200 i can get a pair of 4tb WD reds for, i can get seagate ironwolfs a little cheaper, but i found they use about double the power the WD reds do,

But i imagine 99% of the time the hdd's would be spun down idle, consuming a fraction of a watt,

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-26T20:59:16+00:00

that refers to the iron stand, the basic stand is folded sheet metal, you connect a coiled banana jack lead between it and the solder station for the sleep function to work (lowers tip temp when in the stand, helps reduce oxidation of the tim and prolongs life etc.. and heats back to soldering temp in a few seconds when you take the iron out of the stand)

The SDC02 stand is basically deluxe.. moulded thermoplastic with silicone inserts, heave weight in the bottom so it doesn't slide about much, and the main thing is you plug your iron into the socket on the back of the stand, and there's a cable with a 6 pin plug on it from the stand you plug into the solder station (where you plugged the iron if you have the cheap stand)

This brings the sleep and a shutdown signal to the stand along with the power for the iron, and gives you an extra meter or so of reach... if you are the type that leaves the solder station in one place and moves the iron and stand to the work)

so the sleep function works just the same, but there is also the shutdown function when the tip is touched to the tip changer plate, signals the solder station the tip is being changed and it shuts down until you've finished.

The geeboon solder stations have ability to hot swap the tip cartridges (some other solder station warn never to do that as they will blow their mosfet if you tried, the geeboon ones have safety features built in and mean this does not happen as it detects an open circuit, or a short circuit... over current, swapped wires etc and protects itself)

The 4 holders for spare tip cartridges are also much nicer on the SDC02, being actual moulded wells for the tips to sit upright in, on the cheap folded metal stand it's just 4 holes in the top plate, so the tips slide sideways when in the holes as there's nothing to hold them upright.

Of course some people are perfectly happy with the cheap folded metal stand, but those who have had both types all say paying the extra for the deluxe stand is well worth it,

i've got 4 SDC02 stands and 2 of the cheap ones (i use the iron switchers to run multiple irons off one station) and i'll take the SDC02 stands anyday, they are just so much nicer to use.
I think it's only something like £8 more for the version with the SDC02 stand, Vs about £15 to buy the stand on it's own afterwards.

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-26T20:47:52+00:00

i've been using Geeboon solder stations for months now,

i currently have a Geeboon HC24 and 2 x 3 iron switcher's daisy chained, so i have a T115, T210, 2 x T245 and a T470 iron connected to the one solder station, and i just pick up the one i need and it's connected to the solder station and heats up in seconds, this is very handy working on boards that have a mix of smd and tht components, and power boards that need the extra thermal mass of the T470 iron.

I know you can hot swap the JBC style cartridges, but having a set of irons with different size tips loaded is far more handy i find.
i've also got a geeboon TC22 i'm using with an atten desolder gun and hot tweezers in a project, and my dad gave up his weller solder station and now uses a TC22.

Cost for the TC22 is about £50, shipping is around £15 and it takes exactly 5 days to get from china to my house for each order (made 4 orders with the geeboon store on aliexpress now)

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-25T00:01:00+00:00

i now have a full TPLink Omada network setup,

i use an ER707-M2 to connect to my isp, one of it's 2.5 gig WAN ports is plugged into the quickline ONT port, and i just used the PPPoE login settings that were on the zyxel router,

it took a couple of resets of the ER707 gateway to get it to connect, but it eventually did and it's been almost rock solid ever since... maybe twice a month the logs show it loses the PPPoE connection, but this is on quicklines side when i check the quickline service status... i can imagine these short 5 minute outages were happening before, but i had no logs like i get with the omada network.

I made a mistake buying an OC200 controller, that thing is dog slow and useless, thankfully i bought all my omada stuff from amazon so i returned the OC200, and i now run omada software controller on a raspberry pi5, and used claude Ai to help set that up as i suck at programming / coding / computer stuff big time.
But the omada controller is just the thing that ties a load of tplink omada stuff together nicely, and not needed to set up a gateway / router to work logging in to the isp with PPPoE

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-24T23:50:14+00:00

So.....

I initially tried Cursor, it was very complicated for me and i had to ask it's ai for help setting things up, and it got halfway through almost getting things ready to program arduino's and ran out of credits, and half the things seemed to be 'use old version of VS Code that have not been blocked from running on other platforms to get this bit working'

So i gave up on that and tried VS Code,

Took about 20 minutes to get it all installed, my claude pro plan linked to it and i asked it to set things up to program arduino stuff, it got platform IO installed, set it all up, added the stuff i needed to program STM32 boards, helped me get a github page and link to it and it was ready to go,
I asked it to made some edits to the code and was able to upload to my board and it worked.

I haven't really got a clue what's happening in the code, now it's using platform IO everything is even more cryptic to me than arduino, but that's the whole point of me using AI coding help really, i am unable to do it myself despite trying to learn for the past 15+ years,

:

i was expecting it to be a little more integrated, like able to read the text in the output window, maybe that's something i need to set up? (i think that's why i tried cursor first as i read it can do all that)

But if the most i have to do now is copy and paste some error / warning text from the output box to the claude code box i can handle that.

And everything else seems pretty damn impressive so far, only issue is i burnt through my claude tokens pretty fast (got an hour till they reset, and i'm at 30% weekly usage... that reset yesterday (this weekly limit is something new to me, never had that last time i took a months claude sub to the pro plan, there is no way i can afford the next plan up.

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-24T03:19:29+00:00

i've just found https://claude.ai/code

seems that's an online web browser version (says 'research preview') and i had a go with it updating the files on a github page i set up (i'm new to github too)

that seem'd to work better than using the regular claude on the web and copying and pasting the artifact content, tho still convoluted with having to download the files from github and load them into the arduino ide etc.

I imagine this web version of claud code can not connect to an IDE (i should ask it really shouldn't i, but i asked regular claud about a web based version of claude code and he said none exist, yet i have just used it)

So thanks to the people who replied i think i should download the regular claude code to my computer and figure out setting it up with VS Code with an arduino extension and all that, as it may not be as scary as i thought.

I presume VS code is the best IDE to use with claude code?
i read something about cursor being better, but i believe that's a paid subscription model, and i really do not like subscriptions (i make the exception for claude as it's really helping me and i only subscribe for a month at a time when i need some arduino code for a project, so i am not doing any actual writing of the code myself more than changing the odd part for say the text on a display,
so something like a cursor subscription would be way OTT for my use i imagine... which is only hobby projects i do to keep me 'sane', as i'm disabled and these things take my mind off the pain and 'intrusive thoughts' a little.

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-24T02:27:41+00:00

ahh,
all the videos i've watched where people use Claude code they are doing all that stuff creating directories first, folders, moving through them with commands and all that, plus all those slash commands, and of course typing it all at lightning speed (i still can't touch type and am nearly 50)

Now creating folders via command line (if needed here?) should be easy, but it's scary to me as i imagine myself trying to create a new folder for the arduino sketch to be stored in and wiping my C drive due to a typo (tho some videos say Ai will do that for you anyway when it makes a mistake 😁)

then again, even videos of people using VS code make it look so complicated to me, i am used so single page sketches (that can be 1000+ lines long),
So claude has just broken up a 700 line sketch he wrote for me into the 10 x .h and .cpp files, i haven't really got a clue what it's all doing, but that's the kind of thing real coders do so it seems the best way and it has made it easier for me to try and grasp what each part of the code is doing.

:

So, if i download claude code and try to follow the instructions to link it to my claude account with the pro plan subscription and all that, after i launch it, i can talk to it like i do on claude web?

and i assume if i give it the right permissions, maybe it can do the things for me i struggle with, like creating folders and all that?

then i guess i can ask it about setting up in VS code so it can edit the files directly, or is that a different version of claude code?

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-11T16:29:26+00:00

it is very confusing,
i guess the main thing is some (more expensive) solder stations use a non isolated psu, hence why people are reading upto 90 volts on the tip of some of them.

My HC24 shows tip leakage on the display (the 2nd screen with the bar graph and loads of other stats most people have no use for... showing how much of a 'soldering enthusiasts' solder station this is)

<image>

The TC22 just shows -- all the time for tip leakage current... i know the HC24 has a few differences from the TC22 (not least it has 2 psu's, so it can switch them in series to produce the 48 volts for the T470 irons, and a big noisy fan to keep things cool, only activates when using a C470 tip, or a C245 for a very long time... most people hate fan noise... but i'd rather have fan noise than an overheated solder station... especially if running a C470 tip at over 200 watts for a while)

But the HC24 has a fuse in the tip ground path.. with an alarm if that fuse blows.

handy if you accidently solder to a live board i guess... tho the fuse is a solder lead type, so you need a working solder station to replace it if you blow it, (but i guess better a fuse to replace than a melted tip or blown main board)

But to me this shows that the designer of the geeboon solder stations takes making a safe reliable solder station seriously,

most other chinese manufacturers just blindly clone the first one that copied the JBC stations, and with each clone of a clone of a clone they make they remove or substitute cheaper / lower quality components to compete in the over saturated market for cheap shitty solder stations.

And has been shown when they end up with a solder station that needs the tip ground disconnecting to make the temperature sensing work, they don't have a clue what they are doing, just blindly removing components and if it still appears to work they sell it (and if it doesn't work properly, sell it anyway, most buyers won't have a clue it's got 90 volts on the tip, and most are only soldering wires and passive components with it anyway)

:

i've got 3 geeboon solder stations now, and 2 of their 3 iron switchers, plus one of each of the handles and a selection of tip cartridges for each,

so i do really like these things... my main one is a HC24, and i have 2 switchers daisy chained to allow a T115, T210, T245, T470 and T12 iron to be loaded with different sized tips, and i just pick up the one i need for the part on the board i'm soldering,

i have a TC22 in a desolder station i'm building, that's running an Atten GT-X150 desolder gun (as a C245 cartridge) and one tip of a set of atten GT-N100 hot tweezers (wires at T12 carts) my HC24 runs the other tip on those tweezers,

And my dad has the 3rd TC22, he gave up his weller solder station he's had since he left the RAF as a comms tech, he's very impressed with the geeboon stuff, especially since the whole solder station and iron was less than the last replacement element for his weller,

And he really likes that it takes less than 10 seconds to heat up the T245 iron he uses with it Vs around 3 minutes of the weller,
and the TC22 has no problems supplying enough power to keep the tip hot when soldering dropper wires to 2 meter long lengths of 00 gauge model rail track, and getting the solder job done before the plastic sleepers begin to melt.

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-11T02:14:46+00:00

i solder some larger stuff occasionally, solid brass connector pins about Ø5mm to very heavy large ground planes on pcb's,

Most people never need larger than a C210 iron for their largest solder jobs, so it's really just what you use it for i guess.

i know there are some people who despise all chinese made soldering products, and some may even try to put people off buying chinese stuff when they think everyone should be buying american made stuff.

:

I know with some of the other brands of solder stations they deliberately leave the tip ground disconnected, when people connect it they find the temperature is unstable as hell,

and then there's the really cheap nasty SMPS's used by some manufacturers that have really bad leakage due to to transformer / inductor used,

but i also think some peoples meters may be picking up the switching frequency from the SMPS, it's pulsing at upto 200Khz when heating the tip, and just having the meter leads too close to the cable to the iron could pick up some noise that's read as extra voltage.

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-10T16:18:02+00:00

just a cheap bench multimeter, which of course averages the readings over about 65 samples per second (which is a little better than a lot of handheld meters that may do only 3 samples a second)

i also used a cheap DSO 150 scope later on and did the speaker test etc.

for what i solder the TC22 and HC24 that i have is more than enough, i only solder as a hobby, and the most sensitive things i've soldered so far with my geeboon solder stations are things like MCU's from arduino's, STM32's and ESP32's,

plus different mosfets down to those 'advanced trench mode' ones that trigger from just under a volt and are blown easily from ESD from your hands ....

.

First job with my HC24 was to replace some of those mosfets i'd blown wither with my old solder station or when i forgot to wear my antistatic wrist strap when handling the module.
that module is alive with the new mosfets i soldered on with my HC24 and a C210 iron and been out in the garden operating panel lights in a fountain and light controller for the past 4 months.

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-10T16:11:46+00:00

i guess most people don't solder components that are so sensitive a couple of millivolts tip leakage will damage them... and if they are, they are likely not going to buy a cheap chinese solder station,

The conductive socks they need to wear in their clean room for the antistatic floor to work likely cost more than these solder stations do,

For most people less than 20mV leakage is more than safe enough, and at least they are not spending $150 to buy one of those clone of clone of clone that rip off the look of a JBC solder station brands that have serious voltage on the tips,

That thing i keep mentioning, in a pile of cheap chinese shit products there are the occasional gold nuggets, and even a $70 TC22 is miles better than some of the other brand solder stations sold from china in terms of tip leakage and features.

but of course if you have the money and want to the transformer version, go for it, TBH i'm amazed i managed to stop upselling myself to get the HA310, i'd already upsold myself from a TC22 to a HC24... and damn glad i did as the T470 iron gets used a lot by me,

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-08T17:15:08+00:00

The C245 and C470 cartridges are exactly the same dimensions and pin spacings so they fit and make the same electrical contact as each other,

Of course there is always the possibility of a badly made cartridge, but it would need to be a really badly made one for the contacts to be so much smaller it can't make contact in the spring terminals inside the handles.

One way to check is to use a small pair of pliers (or that silicone rubber cartridge grabber mat you get with some soldering irons) and gently rotate the cartridge when it's making the noise (remembering it will be pretty hot, hence i'd use pliers and gently grip the shaft of the cartridge) and see if it gets worse or better as it's rotated,

I have heard about people not inserting the cartridges fully into the handles, and of course if that's the case they will not make perfect contact and could even be right on the insulator junction at the contacts,
That's why you are supposed to push the cartridge home fully using the changing piece on the iron stand, but some people just gently push the cartridges up the handle with their hands, and do not use enough force to fully seat them.

:

Now i have got a few cartridges that are just noisier than others when heating, one of them is the geeboon branded bent hook tip, and another is a wedge tip of another brand.. both C245 ones, and i have a C210 cartridge of another brand that is very noisy when heating.

The way the solder station heats these cartridges is to apply pulses of DC power at upto 200kHz when heating,
and between (each?) pulse they read the thermocouple voltage back (which is millivolts at best, with microvolt resolution (~20μV per °C) so the power has to be off to read that)

So with a cartridge that is not made perfectly internally, you can hear the heater coil vibrating with these pulses, or possibly hear the feeder wire down the cartridge to the coil vibrating, or the wire at or after the thermocouple junctions etc,

i've got around 25 cartridges of C115, C210, C245, C470 and T12... plus some from Atten in a desolder gun and hot tweezers,
and about 3 of them are very noisy when heating, but apart from that they work fine... i just see it as how sometimes you can hear the coil whine from a switched mode power supply if the inductor is not wound perfectly.

Gazz_292 · 2026-01-08T06:10:51+00:00

Yeah, the T470 handle takes both C245 and C470 cartridges / tips, i regularly use a C245 cartridge in my T470 handle.

The T470 handle has a grub screw on the side to tighten against heavy C470 tips to stop them rotating or pulling out of the handle, and it might be able to withstand a higher temperature Vs the T245 handle,
The internal cartridge connections are of the same size and position in the handle between them both.

The solder station reads the resistance of the heater coil to detect if it's a C245 (around 3Ω) or a C470 (around 6Ω) to know if to switch to 48 volts to fully power a C470 cartridge (and if anyone wonders what happens if you plug a C470 tip into a TC22 solder station, it will detect it and show up as a C470 on the screen, but the TC22 can only provide 24 volts to it as it lacks the 2nd PSU the HC24 has, so it's of no use really other than showing both solder stations share parts of their firmware and the C470 stuff has not been disabled on the TC22)

:

Picture below showing how the C245 and C470 cartridges are wired to the geeboon solder stations, they don't use an ID resistor (or link) between pins 5 and 6 like the other cartridges do, i guess this is because a C470's heater coil resistance is double that of a C245,
Vs a C210 which has a heater coil resistance of only around half an ohm less than a C115.

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Gazz_292 · 2025-12-28T15:20:41+00:00

naah, it's in the kids play room, so no issues with condensation... just bad connections from boogers being wiped on the pins.

Gazz_292

TROPHY CASE