On the T12 irons which are sometimes mentioned they are borderline illegal when it comes to the power supply design earthing and will quite happily kill you dead if you don't rework them first.Ĭertainly doesn't, but I've come to very much appreciate my TS100's brains. There is no condition that can cause a complete thermal overload cycle. They heat up within 2 seconds when you pick the iron up as they do not use normal heating elements. Metcal PS900 also has an optional stand which puts the iron in safe standby mode. That risk is especially high when you have high capacity supplies.īuying a decent, simple iron will probably cost you less than your house does if it goes up.Īs for leaving irons on I have never done it. And also the thermal sensor fails unsafe. The tip mount/socket shorts out which will blow the guts out of the MOSFET and there are various brown-out conditions which cause the thing to crash and dump the entire supply into the tip until it glows orange. The TS type irons and the T12's are however 100% not safe devices. The metcal PS900 is actually cheaper now than the equivalent bottom end Weller TCP units and much much cheaper than the Hakko FX951 irons. Now, just bring the iron along with USB battery pack you were probably gonna bring anyway. It doesn't do much at the workbench, but if you're one of those people that leaves the house (modulo Covid), it turns out to be really useful! In decades prior, butane (cigarette lighter fluid) powered soldering irons existed, but could be persnickety and were a special version to buy. The TS100 is a bit older than the TS80, and can use 12V rechargable battery packs (eg for RC cars/planes) the TS80P can use recent USB-battery pack powering standards. The other innovation of the TS100 is that battery-power capably powers a soldering iron. (Eg maybe it could do 18650 cells, if you don't have a welder.)
I bet there's some cool firmware mods you could do if you have to solder something that looks like a heat sink. Soldering irons are at this fairly unique intersection of consumer device and hardware hacker that I'm really surprised by the some of the luddite attitudes around here. (I wish there was a microwave oven whos firmware I could tweak in order for, eg the popcorn button to make popcorn how I like my popcorn.)
Having an firmware (like the TS100 or TS80) means you can fully customize its behavior unlike most consumer devices. The sensors in the iron lets it shut off and not burn your house down. We've all accidentally left the soldering iron on, sometime in our decades. When the patent ran out, the original engineers ran off to start Thermaltronics. They still are, compared to the bargain basement soldering iron pricing. That's a weird flex, given that Metcals are a high-tech device, using a patented technology and were exorbitantly expensive before patent ran out.