Yeah, the atten or quick with the turbine fans in stations will cover you for most things, though as I mentioned my preference would be to have both, as I do prefer the fan in handle style for smaller stuff… just to give you an idea… I’m routinely reballing switch SoC with this fan in handle style with no issue, which should give you an idea of how efficient it is, so I do think they get a bit of a bad rap
What would be a cool modification is swapping out the diaphram pump in your aoyue with a turbine fan as used in the quick/atten… I’ll have to see if you can buy these fans seperately as I am quite fond of those Aoyue stations and reckon they deserve a second lease of life
So you can buy them (and you can likely find them considerably cheaper than this)
Though it looks like it’s using a brushless motor so you would have to get a controller for that which complicates things slightly
Or go nuts and get something like this
and wire it directly up to the mains input with a triac inline for speed control though it’s a bit hard to gauge the size of this so it probably wouldn’t even fit in the aoyue chassis
Not sure if this is that easy as that unit also have smoke absorber, so that is also something to think about when engineering this mods i guess. I would love to go for such mods, but i don’t think i am good enough as of today to build that on my own.
Hi there,
I checked what was wrong with my hot air and from what i saw, the heating element just performs well, the temperature set is reached, and i see the resistance elements warming up without any issue. Now when it comes to the air flow, different story. I think the steel ball is somehow lying, because it goes to almost the top immediately, however i can feel there is no difference after 1.5 air flow (out of 8), From 0 to 1.5 i feel the air flow increasing, but then the pump makes a huge noise but the air flow doesn’t change. I will have to disassemble this and see if i can do something.
Edit : yeah there is certainly something wrong with mine, if i look the video of that guy about this soldering station, the noise and the air flow behavior is nothing to compare with mine :
tbh it’s been years since I used this station… from memory mine was considerably louder than in the video and the pump had an annoying rattle/vibration but this could just be after years of use…
If I remember right the pump had a shipping screw installed (red i think) below the atation which is supposed to be removed prior to use, so that’s worth checking I guess.
As for airflow, I’m not sure, maybe see if there’s any sort of calibration which can be done internally for this?
The two issues I recall with this station when I had it in use were, air and in turn heat consistency coming out the nozzle, holding it on a sheet of plain paper and the scorching/discolouration of the paper was never even… I never got to the bottom of what the cause was… could have been a wonky element in the handpeice or restricted airflow or restricted airflow as a result of the wiring running down the same tube as the air itself (which is pretty dumb design) the other issue was the element just wearing out and needing replaced
One of the reasons I loved this station was the use of analog controls for temperature and airflow which made it super quick, and I really liked the physical airflow indicator. I had completely forgot it lacked auto shutoff when the gun was back in the cradle… can’t say I’m too keen on this omission in hindsight.
Exactly the same for me, not sure about the use, because from my side i never worked intensively with it, i was just making some work this and there, only recently i am using it more often.
Yep but that’s remove, for sure.
I need to check that, i wanted to disassemble the diaphragm also, to check if there isn’t anything stock in it.
From what i saw, the heating element isn’t centered in the tube, that may explain this, i tried to fix it, it isn’t perfect, but much better now from my side. I need to check then if it is even.
Same for me, just the heating air temperature adjustment from my side is much slower than in the video when maintaining the push on the button, not sure why, probably board revision is different.
I will have a look this weekend, hope to fix it, didn’t plan to buy a new station which is a certain budget…
Yeah, either that or maybe a loose or broken seal somewhere
Yeah could be the problem,… I just a saw a video of someone replacing the element and then checking for overshoot and undershoot conditions… I changed the element in mine and this might ultimately be the reason I stopped using this station (I forget) , in the video the overshoot and undershoot was insane to the point of being unusable imo with no ability afaict to calibrate the hot air… trouble is, even calibrated (assumed with original element) the thermal regulation I expect will still be pretty bad here… I don’t recall ever checking this with stock element but should have
I think realistically to make bring this station up to modern standards would require implementing in some custom MCU with your own PID routine for the hot air, ditching the soldering iron portion of it, possibly fitting a turbine fan in place of the diaphram pump, and maybe even changing the wand/gun itself with one which holds the element better… by the end of it I’m not sure it’s worth it.
