Not only novice radio amateurs, but also experienced craftsmen experience certain difficulties when soldering electronic elements with inexpensive soldering irons without thermoregulation. After all, you may encounter such a phenomenon as overheating of the tip of the device, which leads to oxidation of the solder, the formation of carbon deposits on copper, and due to poor thermal contact with tin on the board and the element leg, or to excessive heating of the board and delamination of the tracks on it. In this article, we will look at how to make a do-it-yourself soldering station, providing all the necessary assembly diagrams, photo and video materials.
Content:
- Step 1 - Making a contact soldering iron
- Step 2 - Assembling the air soldering iron
- Homemade Arduino review
Step 1 - Making a contact soldering iron
This option can be called the simplest and quite budgetary. This design regulates the voltage on the soldering iron, accordingly changing the temperature of the tip. But with this method of adjustment, there is no feedback with the sting, that is, we can judge its temperature only by external indicators. However, this also significantly improves the quality of the soldering. If you plan to connect large parts, then the power supplied to the soldering iron can be increased, if smaller, then reduced, which is very convenient.
As a voltage regulator, we recommend using dimmer for lighting (dimmer). The only drawback of this DIY soldering station idea is that the temperature range is too wide. After all, the power in the dimmer is regulated from almost 0 to the maximum, while we do not need to decrease the power by more than 2 times. But you can redo the circuit, add a "fine tuning" resistor in addition to the main one.
Soldering station assembly diagram at home:
This circuit uses a rectifier bridge, which will raise the voltage from the standard 220 volts at the input to 310 volts at the output of our homemade soldering station. It will be important to do this for those home craftsmen who have an electric the voltage in the house is low, due to which the soldering iron does not heat up to operating temperature. If there is no dimmer available, you can assemble it yourself, how to do it, and what you need for this, we considered in our article about homemade dimmer.
Step 2 - Assembling the air soldering iron
Sometimes when soldering, it becomes necessary to replace SMD elements and the soldering iron with a tip is too large and inconvenient for this. For these purposes, a special air dryer is used. The principle of its operation is similar to a home hair dryer - the air flow is forcibly blown through the heated element and is transferred to the place of soldering, heating the solder contactlessly, evenly, and not at one point, but at some area.
An air soldering iron can be made from an ordinary one by inserting an antenna tube of suitable size instead of a tip. Next, you need to close all the holes provided for cooling. For example, using heat-resistant paper and a coil of copper wire, as shown in the picture.
Forced air is supplied by the aquarium compressor, with the help of a drip tube through the part where the power cord is connected.
To adjust the temperature of the air flow, you can use the dimmer from the previous method. Additionally, it is recommended to rewind the soldering iron to a lower voltage of about 8-15 volts, this will significantly increase the safety of the device due to the absence of life-threatening 220 volts. A nichrome wire with a diameter of 0.8 mm from the spiral of an electric stove can serve as a heater. It must be carefully wound onto the frame without overlaps and short circuits. It should be noted that you will also need a step-down power supply, the power of which must be at least 150 watts. A suitable mains transformer can be used as it.
A more costly method of regulating the temperature at the hot end of the soldering iron is to maintain the set degrees on it. For this, a thermocouple is additionally installed near the tip, in one of our articles we told how to make a thermostat with your own hands.
By combining our homemade products, you can make a universal soldering station that will keep the set temperature, which is very convenient and corresponds to the functionality of expensive purchased models.
Another option is to make a non-contact infrared soldering station from a ceramic cartridge for lamps and spirals made of nichrome, connected to a step-down transformer and a dimmer for convenient adjustments. You can also use a thermostat.
You can see how to work with an infrared soldering station in the video below, and learn about the nuances of working with it there:
Homemade Arduino review
And finally, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with more complex schemes for assembling a homemade soldering station based on the Arduino platform:
We hope that you liked the discussed methods. It remains only to choose the most suitable option and bring it to life.
We also recommend reading:
- How to make a soldering iron yourself
- How to solder radio components from boards
- How to choose a soldering station for your home