Andrew VK3BFA wrote:

Bugger me - I'm glad you lot are not troubleshooting a nuclear power
station!
The Weller WTCP must be one of the simplest decent temperature
controlled irons on the market, mine runs 15hrs/day and does so year
in / year out. Sometimes more when I forget to turn it off - the new
ones dont have the neon in the mains switch so it does happen - I have
2 of them now, one on each bench...

Test procedure.

1. Runs continually, therefore base station and element OK.

2. Check switch - unscrew bit retainer and remove (iron off). Pull
tip in and out - should hear click if switch working. If not, then
switch or tip faulty.

3. LOOK at tip, see if mangnet thingo at bottom has fallen of - if so,
buy new tip (and after all the years youve had it, I wonder if it
could solder anything except 2 wires together, my tips last about 3
months on average, I buy them by the half dozen). If tip defective,
completely dismantle iron and remove magnet from switch assembly.

4. If tip OK (go on, be a devil, buy a new one anyway....) then switch
faulty. Buy new one.

5. Exception to item 4 - if you have done bugger all maintenance to
your iron, clean the garbage out of the barrel - it is rare for
switches to fail "on" (never had one do it, as a matter of fact, but
have only been using Wellers for 20 years so it COULD happen...) - use
a bamboo satay skewer to clean out the crap, then follow procedure 2.

Hope this helps,

de VK3BFA Andrew (at 50, an "official old grump")

I want it for the same reason I want manuals for all of my equipment.
It saves a lot of time locating part numbers when you do a repair. I
have used, and repaired, these soldering stations off and on for years,
but I always had to wait for the distributor to look up the part
numbers.

BTW, I don't do nuclear power, but I did build and test telemetry
equipment used by NASA, including a KU band receiving system aboard the
International Space Station.

The Weller stations were banned from the production line because of a
surge in leakage current when the thermostat tripped in the heating
element, and we were required to use irons with grounded tips that could
reliably measure under three ohms from the hot tip to the electrical
ground on the bench. They were replaced with Ungar "Loner" irons with
electronic temperature control.

I used a spare DMM connected between ground and a piece of scrap
copper to quickly test the resistance any time any of the three irons
had sat idle. I used the irons so many hours a day they tips only lasted
a few weeks before the iron plating was pitted, and would no longer go
below three ohms. I threw out a lot of tips that could have been used
in non ESD situations, but we couldn't risk someone reusing a bad tip,
so they went into the recycling bin with other solder related scrap.

I have five dead Weller soldering stations I picked up that will need
new irons, after someone tried to "Fix" them, and left the irons in
pieces.


--
6 days!


Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida