Cool inespensive soldering iron

[Iain]

Y'all, I just want to point out the ts100; great little soldering iron.

And, if you're into firmware upgrades:
https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS/

[davefoxx]

Firmware upgrades?  For a soldering iron?  My thirty-year-old 40 watt Ungar soldering iron is just fine, thank you very much.  It has “on”: plugged in, and “off”: not plugged in. 

DFF

[Iain]

Firmware upgrades?  For a soldering iron?  My thirty-year-old 40 watt Ungar soldering iron is just fine, thank you very much.  It has “on”: plugged in, and “off”: not plugged in. 

DFF

I thought the same until I tried it.  Now I'm hooked.

[Chris333]

It works great till Google shuts it off.

[mmagliaro]

 I have a temperature controlled soldering iron, it shuts off automatically when I stop using it, and it "smartly" heats back up in a few seconds when I touch it to something if I have left it alone long enough for it to shut off.   There is a power switch and a temperature dial, and that's it.  I'm having a really hard time imagining what a programmable device would do to make this easier.  It has menus, fonts, and there are instructions on what buttons to press, or press-and-hold.  That's all a more complex user interface whose purpose escapes me.

[nkalanaga]

It would be great for temperature-sensitive electronics, where both the temperature and heating time have to precisely controlled.  We have a station at work with just those requirements, although, since it only solders one part, it doesn't need to be programmable.

For modeling, I'm with DaveFoxx, although mine isn't as old as his, being a replacement for one that broke years ago.  I dropped it (cold) and the heating element snapped.

[wazzou]

I’ve got this and it’s been a champ for everything I’ve needed, so far.

[Chris333]

Ungar utc 300 for me with replacable tips and element. The wifi is spotty though     

[wazzou]

Ungar utc 300 for me with replacable tips and element. The wifi is spotty though     

Probably the danged auto updates.

[mmagliaro]

I have the same Weller one that wazzou posted his photo of.  It's worked great for several years - can't remember when I got it.
I bought it to replace a very old Ungar 9000 series that I got from a work salvage sale in the 1990s, for which I could no longer get a replacement heating element.

[Steveruger45]

I’ve got this and it’s been a champ for everything I’ve needed, so far.

Yep, me too.  Same unit. I couldn’t be more pleased with mine.

[craigolio1]

I’ve got this and it’s been a champ for everything I’ve needed, so far.

What model is this?

[C855B]

It works great till Google shuts it off.

Not as silly or mock-paranoid as it sounds. We used to have a Nest (Google) thermostat in the layout building. SOBs bricked it twice, a year apart, with pushed firmware updates - in the middle of coldest winter (aughts and teens) both times. Thank goodness we were in town to power-down/hard-boot... the friggin' thermostat.

OTOH, while "open source" sounds wonderful and all that community-based rot, I wouldn't exactly call testing and QA protocols robust. When the big software companies screw-up in major ways and/or have policies of intentionally disabling product features with OS updates (...Apple...), what is the recourse, if any, with a rag-tag co-op of self-appointed do-gooders with no customer service department and sure as hell no 800 number? "It works for me!" is the usual response to online "support", when it's not, "You mean you don't know how to code [obscure language variant]? Don't bother us until you do."

[Maletrain]

My solution is to not connect my thermostats to the Internet - ever.  The only reason I have ever had a thermostat "die" was when my mechanical one was replaced with an electronic one, which required batteries - which eventually died - because nobody told me it had batteries.  But, that one was not "smart" (enough to connect to the Internet?).  Never had a mechanical/electrical thermostat fail, in what must have amounted to a couple hundred "house-years" of operations in my family.

Now, my new (thinks they're so) "smart" electronic thermostats are flashing at me, imploring that I connect them to the Internet.  Ha!!! Not going to happen.  I am not going to empower Siri, Google, Putin, and that nasty hacker kid down the street to mess with me via my thermostat.

And I still saved the old electro-mechanical ones, complete with that bulb of heavy metal "known to the State of California" to be harmful to anybody who is dumb enough to take it out of its bulb, oxidize it and then eat it.  To bad my "smart" furnace doesn't understand "on" and "off", but I suspect I could get a relay to "interpret" those power commands if push came to shove.  But, for now, that "smart" furnace and "smart" thermostat are just going to have to keep each other company while I hold them hostage in isolation from the rest of their digital universe.

When it comes to reliability vs convenience, we curmudgeons go for reliability.

[Steveruger45]

What model is this?

Weller WES51