cheap chinese hot air station

[JohnRoberts]

Has anybody fixed a cheap chinese hot air SMT rework station...? Mine just died, and after opening it up I don't see any obvious fault.

I am suspicious of the on/off switch but have to get it further apart to check that thoroughly...  I may have to trace out the circuits. Since it isn't even starting up I expect something simple.

its an 898d model (hot air and iron) but I can't even read the mfr name...

I am reminded of the "buy once cry once" theme about good bench equipment, but good hot ait stuff is 10x the price.  I am cheap and too old to justify buying premium hot air replacement gear.

JR

 

[RuudNL]

I have an YiHua-8786D, I use it occasionally for SMD repair work.
As long as they work, they are good. But don't expect miracles for $40 (or so).
Professional hot air stations are in a completely different price range.
(Not that this solves your problem...)

 

[Rochey]

Dude. not worth fixing.  buy a new one with a warranty, strip the old one for parts (nice LED's, pot, power supply).

Maybe I'm slowly turning into a consumer, but I prefer to spend my time on stuff that is *worth* fixing, or making. If it wasn't an immediately obvious fix (e.g. cap blow, regulator broken etc) then get to amazon and buy a replacement.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Dude. not worth fixing.  buy a new one with a warranty, strip the old one for parts (nice LED's, pot, power supply).

Maybe I'm slowly turning into a consumer, but I prefer to spend my time on stuff that is *worth* fixing, or making. If it wasn't an immediately obvious fix (e.g. cap blow, regulator broken etc) then get to amazon and buy a replacement.

Yup... I actually ordered a replacement yesterday for less than $40 (Hot air only) but that won't arrive for about a week.

The build quality inside looks like crap. My suspicion is a bad switch or bad solder connection in the power circuit.  The soldering iron half never worked from day one but the hot air gave decent service for several years and has already earned back the too cheap to be good price (but not as cheap as they are now).

I noticed on Amazon there were three vendors all selling the same model for exactly the same price $49. While other web sources were $30 to $40... These dynamic pricing algos should have learned from my cookies by now that I live in poor town MS, and I'm cheap.  8)


Thanks and no surprises...  In the past I've repaired similar stuff but after some effort to reverse engineer the design and troubleshoot. I agree this clearly isn't worth that much effort, but I do have some boards I need to rework to meet my current backorder.

JR

PS: I've reworked a lot of SMD with just my iron before getting hot air, so may just do as many boards as I need that way until the replacement arrives.

[update]-  I decided to try applying power one last time before I moved it off my bench before going old school on the SMD rework and it powered up...  ;D so even though it was in pieces spread across my bench I went ahead and reworked the batch of PCB as long as it was cooperating...  Sure enough after I finished and it cooled down,  I turned it off,  and it wouldn't come on again...  : so off to the scrap bin... 

Crisis averted for now and boys and girls can still get their drum tuners shipped this week.  Back to work.

[/update]

 

[Gus]

A youtube with a soldering iron fix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8BGkEnHetI

 

[JohnRoberts]

A youtube with a soldering iron fix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8BGkEnHetI

Thanks for the video but my hot air wand is hard wired into the unit... There is a similar looking connector for the iron half  (it's a combination unit) but the iron never worked from day one and the hot air worked for years.

The symptom seems like perhaps an embedded processor not booting up, I have seen a lot of those lately.  I have moved it to my junk pile for now, and probably forever.

JR