Steve I've been recommending this to people for a while now. All those that got one, have fallen in love with it, I even took mine fishing & used a 12cm Mini Frying Pan. People can LOL all they like, I got 2 nice bacon & egg sandwiches from it. 20v Dewalt cordless drill battery did just fine as the power source. Still clean and in lab use. 😀👍
Private Lake & Farm can't give out the where & how. If I get permission I will take a short video next time. Maybe in the summer IF we get allowed to, with all this long lock-down. Not allowed to wet a line.
I think it was sensible to reserve blue for indicating cold only when the device is actually in heating mode. Green is a nice indication for being in configuration mode when the device won’t be getting hot.
Similarly, I thought green was being used for "safe to touch". Perhaps something like a blue to red ramp could be used to indicate heating. Also quite frequently this sort of indicator colour stuff is culturally specific, and can be a bit of a UX internationalisation headache...
I still think this is too pricy for the little amount of surface area you get but thanks for showing me why they charged the amount they did. Build quality looks top notch! Totally thought it was a novelty Christmas toy when I first saw it on Miniware's channel.
Very nice. You convinced me to get one. Have some small rf boards that are 25mm x 35mm which would be awesome to solder in one shot rather than sitting there with a soldering iron.
"It's not cheap to manufacture this with all these intricate parts." Sure, looks nice, but my bench looks like the dressing room floor behind the fashion show catwalk, not the presentation on the other side of the wall. I'd buy one of these at half the current price if it came in a well camouflaged utility-bench-catastrophe color scheme. Really, this should be designed as an integrated part of one of those magnetic pcb stand/holder setups. Heck, they could do everything, steel base plate, magnetic stands with thumb screw pcb retention, third hand clips, those slinky probing pin holders, lights, magnification, hot air gun holder, and maybe add some tungsten precision probes into the ecosystem. If someone offered all of that in a piecemeal fashion, at an AliEx medium pricepoint, I'd buy into it, especially if it didn't require a large-ish initial purchase and the ecosystem could be added to and expanded with little $10 to $30 purchases as needed.
This is a nice little heater. It's on my shopping list now. Thanks for the review, Steve. I'm waiting for your review of Metcal GT-120 soldering station because you, kind of have become an authority or reference on Metcal products.
I'm sure there will be third party firmware soon to change the colours, but it looks great, sort of thing I want but wouldn't use much !...by the looks and specs I think it's priced well...cheers.
Man, I wish it wasn't €130+ to get it delivered where I live, because this beautiful black little hotplate would be a truly superB addition to my soldering arsenal!
An interesting little device. I wonder if you can put something like a thick thermal pad in between. To cushion the pcb when it also has little protrusions on the underside, from thru hole components and connectors etc. That would make the device more practically useful IMHO. In a much wider range of situations. Yeah preheating a small zone like that is an excellent companion to hot air removal of devices on the ground plane. That would otherwise require a lot harsher settings thrown at them from the hot air alone. To help save stress on components. A slower 100 - 150c preheat temperature beforehand. Another good companion for this device would be some kind of a level area built around the hot zone. So that the pcb can be well supported at the same height. And not fall off.
I think thermal pad would only take up to 100 or 125C or so. But good idea. In other cases people have used sand to heat up boards and fill in the gaps where component leads may be placed.
@Ja Ro thanks i shall remember about the sand. And there are different types of sand... perhaps might also be other 'sand adjacent' materials. Maybe like putty or clay. Something else like that. Which would not fall apart so easily and make a mess everywhere.
Hello dear friend. I need to unsolder an 8-pin potentiometer (2-channel audio potentiometer with switch). If I support/touch the 8 pins of the potentiometer from the bottom of the plate to the ceramic base, will there be enough contact surface to transfer the heat from the equipment to the potentiometer and perform the desoldering? Could you tell me? I need to desolder this type of potentiometer from several plates. I appreciate if you can answer me. thank you so much
I guess blue when cold, blinking red at the point it's dangerous to touch, and solid red when it reaches the peek. It seams too expensive for the specific job it can do, ie, you can't remove ICs with bypass caps under it or double load PCDs, so it's kind-of only flat bottom PCBs.
Thanks for the review Steve. It is a little bit on the pricey side. I have been doing some bodging to some work PCB's lately. Electrolytics are the worst...pads ripped off everywhere with a soldering iron. I wonder if you could localise the heater even further with a section of brass bar for double sided populated boards?
I bought one of these and found it very disappointing. The user interface is fiddly to say the least, but it is also very picky about the power supply. With a 12V 1.5A power supply, it seemed to work correctly, but it heated up slowly and had no capacity to heat a PCB (as you would expect I guess). With a 65W 20V laptop supply it heated rapidly to 50C then stopped, regardless of temperature setting. Got odd behaviour and error messages. No firmware offered on web site so assume I have the latest. It is going back to Banggood for a refund. Maybe I should have bought a unit with the PSU included, but then is the PSU safe...
Not sure if JLCPCB would be daft enough to try and sell a PCB with lead solder. Not sure if there is any product sector that’s allowed to use lead solder. Aerospace and medical were the last bastions of lead solder and they are all lead free now. What sort of fet would handle a 350°C case temperature with a junction temperature higher than that! Why not use a resistive heater? The little cartridge heaters are quite fast in operation.
@@jaro6985 HI, You can still by lead solder. but if you use it in a commercial product you will be opening yourself up for quit a fine under the RoHS Directive in the UK and EU. As Lead is a restricted substances. Even China via it's China RoHS2 restricts the use of lead to 0.1% by weight. So does Japan, Korea, Russia, Canada, even India. With USA you need to know which state your device might be sold in as some states require RoHS compliance but not all. So unless you can limit where sold you need to be RoHS complient. So selling by EBay, Tindie, your own website, you need to take RoHS into account. You have to be careful as just reselling something, you need to know its RoHS compliance. As by placing it on the market makes you the manufacturer under the eyes of the directive. So the moral to this story is if you plan to sell it go lead free and stay safe in the eyes of the law.
@@astrolite3192 Thanks, I never knew that Australia was so far behind, as you were used as part of the study for removing lead in petrol! I can remember all the noise about all the lead in your tinnies. Even China has RoHS restrictions. I expect your get it some point. it always comes to he who waits. ;)
Why dont you also change the heating plate for something else you had on hand..? You, got 3 items delivered free of charge.. *Miniware PD PSU, * Miniware high wattage silicone cable with high wattage chip, and a *Miniware hotplate.. and you exchange 2 out of the 3 things before you even start using it and see what it can muster. c'mon if you wanna test the performance of a kit, then atleats use it as such. You do get when you put other cables that got other current rating in their chips, from fx being longer 3 meters cables and not heat-resistant etc,..you can influence the performance.. same is the case with PD PSU.... Use the product as it comes and the exact situation people would get if they jumped on your piggybackride aff-sources, not least when its shilling for a company. stop exchanging 2/3 items when you don't have too and at least show the wattage info in the display, as that is way more informative then a crude stationary voltage, and would also indicate what wattage it can perform, as I highly doubt it does 65watt. more like 45w to 55w in your setup..
Nice design but too small, too gimmicky. Will just encourage misuse. 3-4 preset-mode buttons on front would of been helpful and encouraged modding, or maybe a link to an app over BT. Every review leaves people looking for stand to prop up pcb, but no stand provided. Good for egg, bacon, and and mini-pancakes. Just keep the flux and solder away.
