“If you are into electronics hobby like me, you must have use a soldering iron in order to make your prototypes or final product. If this is your case, you probably have experienced how your soldering iron, along hours of using, gets overheated such a point the handler can also melt the tin.
That’s because a normal welder which you connect directly to mains voltage, acts as a simple heater and will heat and heat until you disconnect it. That can damage some temperature sensible parts when the solder is overheated.
And this is why the soldering station are the best option for electronics. (if you only solder cables, maybe this is not for you).
The problem is that solder stations are a quite expensive and maybe not all people want to spend 60 or 70 bucks on a digital one.
So here I am to explain you how you can create your own cheaper soldering station using a Yihua welder, which is the most common type of welders (and cheapest one) you can find on Aliexpress.
To create your own soldering station, you need a solder (not any solder, you need an special one intended for stations) and a power supply to heat it. Also you need a way to measure and control the temperature and also an interface to control the station.
You need to buy the parts according to it specifications, so be aware of not to buy incompatible parts. If you don’t know what to buy watch the full post first to decide or buy the exacts components I used.
A generic list of components is:
1x Soldering Station Iron
1x Power Supply
1x Case
1x MCU
1x Thermocouple Driver
1x Relay/Mosfet
1x Interface
In my case, for that project I used:
1x Yihua Soldering Iron 907A (50W) - (13.54€)
1x 12V ATX Power Supply - (0€)
1x 24V DC-DC Booster - (5€)
1x MAX6675 Thermocouple Driver for K Type - (2.20€)
1x Arduino Pro Mini - (3€)
1x IRLZ44N Power Mosfet - (1€)
1x TC4420 Mosfet Driver - (0.30€)
1x OLED IIC Display - (3€)
1x KY-040 Rotary Encoder - (1€)
1x GX16 5 Pin Male Chassis Connector - (2€)
1x OPTIONAL 2N7000 Mosfet - (0.20€)
TOTAL: ± 31€”