A Dead Digital Soldering Iron Bought Back To Life
A computer technician who has a store nearby brought this digital soldering iron for repair. He said that it suddenly went dead. He opened it to see if something was wrong but he could not find anything according to him.
The guy bought this on the net for cheap and he was not willing to spend any money on it because he could buy another one and will cost less than the actual repair.
He is a friend of mine and I was willing to help as much as I can.
There was only one board inside and consist mostly of SMD parts. So I put the board under the microscope and started to check this board.
Here is at test for you; can you see the fault? Here is a hint; it is in the lower side of the board.
Here is a closer picture of the problem, do you see it? If you look closely, you will find the lower resistor has a dark spot on it.
Under the microscope, I could see some readings there. It was 330 and that means it is 33 ohm which is a fuse resistor.
I put a fuse resistor where the bad one was and fired up the device.
The device came on with error display on the screen due to the fact the actual soldering iron was not connected to the main board.
The customer came to pick his device up and was so happy that it was working again. The repair took about five minutes and since he was a friend of mine there was no charge for the repair. He was happy and I was happy that he was happy.
Mission accomplished
This article was prepared for you by Waleed Rishmawi, one of our ‘Master Authors’ and currently working in the Bethlehem area of Palestine repairing electrical and electronic equipment.
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Note: You can check his previous repair articles in the link below:
https://www.electronicsrepairfaq.com/a-shorted-bike-battery-charger-repaired-model-sslg084v42
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Jestine Yong works as an Electronics Repair Lecturer in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and his training website is http://www.NoahtechElectronicsTraining.com. You can check out his repair blog at http://www.JestineYong.com
16 comments on “A Dead Digital Soldering Iron Bought Back To Life”
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Waleed thanks , this is a no panic approach that can only come from well-experienced person-thank you so much.
Justice: you are most welcome and thanks for the kind words.
That is what friends are for, n’est pas! Good job and a nice gesture to a friend.
A friend who now also can help others with repairs after his solder station was fixed.
Albert: thanks man. This friend helped me many times in his shop and refused to take any money. it comes and goes situation.
Always it is a pleasure to do service for friends and families! Well done!
Parasuraman: it is a pleasure to make a difference in people lives..have a blessed day my friend
The troubleshooting was good, but I have something to comment about the repairing:
For more accurate repairing, as I saw the old SMD resistor value can not be determined by an exact value due to the middle digit is lost by black spot (was burned), but the first digit of the left side was “3” and the last at the right side was “0” (zero), that means whatever was the value of the middle digit, the value of the SMD resistor will remain between 30 Ω & 39 Ω, because the first two digits from the left to right (till the middle digit which was burned) if it is multiplied by the third digit in this case was “0” will determine the value of the SMD resistor, therefore the faulty SMD must be between these two values 30 to 39 Ohms. So as I see you did not replace the resistor with same value because it was replaced with 1 kΩ (Brown, Black, Red = 10×100 Ω), the device may work but maybe suffer future problems or malfunction, it’s very recommended to replace components with the same value even if the troubleshooted device will return functioning, especially that in this case the faulty component we can still read the most important digits (the first and the last digit) so we can determine the approximate value to decrease future problems, so why not to replace the SMD with an approximate value of a resistor.
Husam: with all due respect my friend, the resister was fuse resistor and putting a 1K ohm would not work. the fuse resistor was 330 and that means it is only 33 ohms fuse resistor. I found a fuse resistor that has brown black and the last color was gold (not red). it beeped when testing it with the multi meter. last time I checked with this guy it was still up and running. thanks for your remarks though. have a blessed day
I looked up a photo of this Quicko T12-952 board on Aliexpress and noticed its resistor likely was a value 101 (100 Ohm). See there the photo on that T12 952 version.
https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/32995314918.html?spm=a2g0z.search0104.3.14.7e325f05ia3KdK&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0%2Csearchweb201602_8_10065_10068_10843_319_10059_10884_317_10887_10696_321_322_453_10084_454_10083_10103_10618_10304_10307_10820_10301_10821_537_536%2Csearchweb201603_53%2CppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=5f2a37b6-a0a5-4f2a-8442-e84af3eefa49-2&algo_pvid=5f2a37b6-a0a5-4f2a-8442-e84af3eefa49&transAbTest=ae803_4
Abert: you are right but the resistor that i had on the repaired broad was 330 which was 33 ohm. a resister fuse. may be the board you are looking at is upgraded one
This is a focused remark of scientific sense: the code reading from the right of the replacement resistor gives 1kR (the last band is ± 10% silver color tolerance).You are quite right, the value 1kR is much higher than 33R and could disturb the proper functioning of the device and it is convenient to add that it is very easy to find a carbon resistance 33R picked up from the replacement electronics, the code is orange,orange,black (gold color tolerance ±5%)…
Thank you Waleed for this article that offers to me this input on two components with mixed lines : inductance and resistance;I would like to come back to my last comment because it seems to me that replacement resistor has the appearance of a self. It must be said in this connection that several types of inductances merge with resistors and have both inductance and resistance features,that being so I guess that the replacement resistor is a self of 1000 uH is 1 mH (the code is the same as the resistor but the unit is uH) and could has a resistance between 0R and 10R. I think this subject is very important and deserves to be studied by both electronic hobbyists and professionals since these twin components that are everywhere in the electronic tools of daily use are likely to become confused and interfere with each other…
Attached the link of a video about resistors VS selfs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-5MRMy4gcY&t=7s
BEST WISHES
Abdellah: thanks for sharing your thoughts. the video you shared is in french. do you have one in english? thanks and have a blessed day
Hello Waleed, Sorry I have no video in English;I conducted an online search without finding a convenient video in English, but I downloaded this PDF file on inductors with corresponding code, hoping to help you get an idea of this electronic component-
HAPPY TIME
Sorry I forgot here is the file link
http://www.learnabout-electronics.org/Downloads/ac_theory_module03.pdf
GREETINGS
Thanks for this article and for walking us through the diagnostic process. It adds a great deal of value to these articles for a neophyte like me who is just learning electronic repair.
It would be great if some of the contributors would write in a more tutorial style to help us learn. Although I’m sure some of the more experienced readers might be a bit bored with explanations of processes and techniques they would consider fundamental.
Anyway, they’re all good and I enjoy reading them and learning from them. Thanks for this contribution, Mr. Rishmawi.