EEVblog #242 - Hakko FX-888 Soldering Iron Hack

Dave got fed up not knowing if his Hakko FX-888 iron was left on or not. So hacked the LED to toggle RED/GREEN, so it's always on.
Toshiyuki Kita: http://www.toshiyukikita.com/english/index.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• hakko
• fx-888
• soldering
• iron
• hack
• led
• power
• transistor
• npn
• pnp
• mosfet
• vn10
• circuit
• how
• it
• works
• tutorial
• bi-directional
• red
• green
• blue
• toggle
• switching
• hot
• melt
• glue
• Light-emitting Diode
• Bipolar Junction Transistor
• breadboard
• prototype
• schematic
• teardown
• review
• Toshiyuki
• Kita

[DO5TMX]

Glad to see the quality of your raw footage (lighting, audio, etc.) has constantly improved but in the last few videos I noticed ugly, dropout-style artifacts on some cuts.

What's up with that? o_0

[EEVblog]

@DO5TMX I've switched to a new video editor, NCH VideoPad, I think it has a few glitches...

[koktelici]

Hey Dave, I would appreciate if you tell me where can I order 220 V version like yours because

e-bay has only 120 V ones.

It looks like that transformer can be adjusted to both 120 and 220V if I saw it right. Can you confirm that.

[EEVblog]

@koktelici Farnell stock it in Oz. No, I don't believe it is tapped, just the top PCB is designed to fit different transformers.

[keenantims]

Love the idea, and your solution is very elegant - nice to see the design process. It's the one thing I dislike about my Hakko 936. I might just do the simple power LED mod, now that you've given me the idea to bother, normally it bugs me while I'm on my way out the door and can't remember if I turned it off or not.

I think @kevtris is probably right though. Tried to link you to the 936 schem but YouTube is being a pain.

[EEVblog]

@keenantims Just looked at the 936 schematic. Yes, that's rather tricky.

The FX-888 uses a single bigger pin count device, so who knows what it's doing with the LED? Is it just a consolidation of the existing design into the one chip, or something new?

[widar28]

lol "No hack is complete without hot snot" xD

[philbx1]

Hmm, looks like there might be a bit of room in the top.

Maybe enough space for a clothes-dryer timer switch?

[therealjammit]

My solution would be to build a circuit pretty much just like yours, except of an n-mosfet I would use another resistor. The bi-color would be hooked up to the resistive divider at about 4.5V. The transistor in the chip would either short to GND to turn on one LED, or let it float to 9V to turn the other LED on. The resistive divider values may have to be adjusted a little to give both LED's an even brightness.

[mccunecp]

NICE now if you think of it when you increase the temp you now know when the temp is reached cool video.

[ThinkLearnSolve]

@ThinkLearnSolve P.S. my favorite youtube channel :D

[joshstube]

LOVE the MODS!

More MODS please!

[ThinkLearnSolve]

"that will be good enough for Australia", hahahaha

[amtpdb1]

@bytebender

Thanks for the information. I will have to open it up and see if I can do as you mentioned. I think I understand how you did it.

Thanks again.

[bytebender]

@amtpdb1 hi, on my cheap iron I just added led & resistor parallel to the soldering iron output socket - the led lights up the whole time if the iron is heating up and flashes if it holds the temperature, just like the expensive Weller soldering stations. This works 'cause the soldering station does low frequency (0.5...1 Hz) pwm to control the output power.