Today’s exciting electrical resurrection

As I was resurrection and old electrical tool I appear to have developed a need for, it occurred to me that much old electrical hardware has become rare enough never even to have been seen by some people.

I have an ancient Remploy soldering iron that lives at the back of a cupboard, on the basis that I might need it one day. I probably wouldn’t, but for the fact that large soldering irons, even gas powered, seem to have become almost extinct today. Between all the big trade sheds, and even the mighty Amazon, I could only dig up one of the size I was looking for, and intended for soldering seams in copper roofing material.

There are plenty of gas blowtorches, but none have a soldering tip, making things much harder as the bare flame tends to vaporise flux on contact, unless you have access to the right stuff, and probably need to use in conjunction with acid – WAY too much hassle.

So, it was off to the dark reaches of the back of my cupboard, and recover one big soldering iron, 150 watts worth. I only found one larger online, at 300 W. These are not cheap either.

It works!

I had to check it out before even thinking of using it, and was amazed to find the mains lead appeared to be almost like new. It’s not unusual for such old cable to have gone hard, and just crumble when flexed, but this was hardly showing its age.

The real problem was the plug, the original round pin 5 A item was still fitted, and I no longer have the 13 A converters I made up years ago, or any matching sockets. They had to go when the cable they had been made from began to rot, and the insulation started to split, so I dumped them, having not needed such things for years.

However, I do have safe connectors for powering up hardware with no plugs fitted, so the 5 A one came off, and I was able to test the old iron. Thankfully, it worked first time – I would not have been in the least surprised if there had been an extremely loud bang, and sparks!

The only issue seems to be that it’s leaky, although the wires still show tens of megohms. That may be residual damp from where lived.

Here’s the inside of the plug that was fitted, which I would have to guess as 1950s, but probably earlier in terms of manufacture, maybe 1930s.

These are still on sale today, and can be bought new, but these are modern versions, and quite unlike this original.

At this point, I’m just imagining all the ‘Internet Electrical Experts’ grasping their chests as their hearts fail, and their last effort to type out a list of the compliance failures they can think of before they curl up and die.

I actually like a lot of the early electrical hardware, and have a big box of the stuff ferreted away in the loft, taken from kit I was updating.

What about the iron?

Apologies for not including a pic of the big old soldering iron, but it’s on test, and needed for the job in hand.

However, I’ll do my best to remember not to forget to take a pic when it’s available, and include that in a short follow-up post.

I’ll try to take a view that shows the power on neon in the handle.

Just think, a neon lamp that’s probably around100 years old, and STILL working perfectly.

💡 😊

You’re not going crazy – your soldering iron IS cold (and yet another failure)

Recently, I thought my soldering abilities were degenerating. – I should have known better, and realised yet ANOTHER failure was incoming.

Normally, soldering is a non-issue as I’ve been doing it for so long, and I use proper kit, a Weller Magnastat. These things just work.

But, recent jobs just weren’t going as expected, with random instances of poor wetting, and solder flow. At times, it even seemed as if the iron wasn’t on – but whenever I specifically checked, everything seemed to be fine, hence suspicions that I was somehow at fault.

As noted in the recent post about the dead fan on my modified 12 V cool box, things came to a head when I was exonerated, and the soldering iron stopped working altogether – right in the middle of this job. At least I have plenty of spares, and they warm up fast :-)

What went wrong?

Yet another damned failure to investigate – at least these things are not complicated, being a Magnastat as opposed to electronic temperature control.

Even so, it put up a little fight.

The power supply was obviously OK, since the replacement iron was fine.

All the part in the handle checked out OK as well – it’s not unknown for the contacts in the ‘Power Switch’ to fail, but not this time.

My last failure, years ago, was related to that, when the link between the magnet and switch broke, due to corrosion, which had just eaten through it, and it separated. Not this time though.

I was scratching my head for a moment, then realised I hadn’t checked the cable!

Sure enough, one of the wires inside that cable was open circuit. Yes, my kit uses those cute little 3-pin plugs.

It had probably been failing for a while, hence the past intermittent issues I’d been experiencing – at least this confirmed not imagination, or going nuts.

But, where IS the break?

The only problem was finding out WHERE the break was. Not obvious since I don’t own one of those neat RF system that can now be attached to suspect wires, and have a small handheld unit to sniff out where the signal stops along the cable. Nor do I have a TDR (look it up).

I resorted to a method demonstrated by an expert – grip the cable firmly a short distance from the end, then grab the end of each wire in turn, and PULL.

Do it carefully (this is NOT a method for the ham-fisted that break everything they touch), and the broken wire will stretch as the ends move apart, unlike the undamaged wires, which will not move.

This actually worked, and showed the wire had broken just past the black tail seen at the right-hand end of the body, in the pic above, No great surprise.

The only problem with this is the length of cable that has to be cut off to make a new end to connect to the iron – as can be seen below, the length of the earth wire means a lot of waste in the power wire, especially in this case, since the broken wire was blue in my case, but that’s the old colour, and the pic shows a new cable, so it’s the black one.

This cable is short to begin with, and it’s now even shorter, but at (currently) £25 just for this short piece of cable – it’s heat-resistant silicone, so a hot soldering iron won’t damage it – it could get much shorter if anything else breaks.

Problem? Of course there was a problem

This SHOULD have been straightforward once I’d cut off the dead section, and terminated the new end as shown above.

However, referring to the earlier Magnastat diagram, note the small board above the words ‘Power Supply’, where these wires are attached to eyelets that provide mounting points for the wiring to the ‘Power Switch’ and element.

While this may be great for the factory – drop in the wire, blob on some solder, and the job is done.

That board is actually a thermoplastic moulding which supports all the internal parts, and acts as a cable grip.

That plastic is one that begins to melt almost as soon as it is threatened with a hot soldering iron, and the eyelets will just come out of the plastic as soon as they are heated to remove the original wiring!

Instead of a few moments work to remove the old wires soldered into them, and solder in the new ends, I had to set up TWO mini-vices, one to hold the board with the eyelets, and one to hold the wire ends in place.

Without this, the eyelets would just have fallen out of that plastic as soon as it melted, and that was BEFORE the solder had melted, and allowed the old wire ends to be removed.

Maybe fine for production, but a terrible choice of material, from a repair/service viewpoint at least, making the job almost impossible. I’m lodging this one deeply in my ‘Bad Design’ category.

To end on a positive note – at least this iron now seems to be working the way it should. Something I don’t was true for some time.

Failures – Now queuing up to get to me

It’s beginning to feel as if failures are beginning to line up at my door, just to make sure I can’t get anything done – currently so many it would be a real waste of time to try summarising (just look up recent posts on the subject).

I had to revive a past project, when I noticed spring had arrived, and the ambient temperature in Scotland was about to rise above that of the inside of a fridge!

It’s not ideal, but can be put into service quickly – I SHOULD have known better :-(

Fortunately, I have to visit it every few hours, to get goodies from inside.

On one such visit I noticed an odd smell, and spotted the red temperature display was showing ambient, not the chilled value – this suggested a problem somewhere.

Sure enough, the side of the case was warm, and the circular exhaust VERY warm – and no fan sound, despite the power indicator showing it was, or should have been, on. It was dead.

Fan?

I assumed the ‘cheap and nasty’ 12 V fan’s bearings had given up after running for so long, then being left unused.

That, like most assumptions, proved to be wrong.

It almost spun freely, and had to be dismantled to find the real problem.

As can be seen in the pic below, the spring metal ‘brushes’ had simply been worn away by a few months constant use, something they’re clearly not up to, and would have to have carbon brushes, or a brushless motor, for this application. The original would only see a few hours use in the original ‘Cool Box’ application during summer, and last for years, but when in use 24 hours a day (not RUNNING 24 hours of course, but in used for weeks, rather than days), the plain metal sprung contacts just don’t have the necessary’meat’, and soon wear out.

Comprising three fingers on each side, one had worn away on each side, and it looked as if the remaining stub had jammed in the commutator, stalling the motor.

First fix failed

I dug into the old computer/PC pile, and didn’t have any loose 12 V axial computer fans (all were 115 V or 240 V), which are always brushless, so would have been ideal.

Plan B kicked in, and I pulled a PC power supply apart, extracting the cooling fan, handily just the right size, 12 V, and brushless.

Surprisingly, it just didn’t move enough air.

• Ambient 17°C
• Chiller 14°C
• Fan exhaust 33°C

Seems that this PC PSU wasn’t as big as I thought, so I might have to find an older one from a bigger computer. Or, use one of the mains powered fans, which would be inconvenient. Plus, they’re all physically bigger.

As I recall, many earlier PC fans blew like small hurricanes, and many also had temperature sensing fan speed reducers added to calm them down the manufacturers started adding them at the factory, but this one was continuous running, not modified, and just too weak.

I have some CPU coolers too, all 12 V DC, but they’re just too small.

MORE fail – even as I worked

As I’ve said, the failures are currently queuing up to get at me.

Normally reliable, my industrial grade Weller soldering iron joined the ‘Fail Party’, and decided to stop being hot as I worked on this fan installation, and suddenly found the solder wouldn’t melt.

I had to stop and tear it down, finding that one of the wires in the cable connecting to its power supply appeared to have gone open circuit.

At least I could just grab another iron and plug it in, since all the wire terminations at each end of the cable seemed to be fine, meaning the break is probably internal, making the cable a write-off.

Like I say, it’s almost as if someone was arranging these fails, one after the other.

2020’s been a pain – but soldering actually got a little better

While there was a general Internet ‘thing’ going on in 2019 – if you missed this, then it ran along the lines of thought that anyone famous or well-known (I won’t use the ‘C’ word since it is now so devalued by the scum it is applied to nowadays) – should take cover in a bunker, or they’d die -I seem to have suffered something similar in 2020. I’ll either be frustrated in something I try to achieve, or something completely unexpected will appear out of nowhere, and I’ll feel like I’m taking three steps back for every two steps forward.

This week brought a classic example after I bought a new soldering iron because I anticipated doing some work with SMDs (surface mounted devices) and, while I have suitable tools, I just wanted something a lot smaller and lighter.

I’m sure most ‘old hands’ will tend to smile sympathetically, shake their heads, and start looking for something ‘better’ to loan to anyone they see buying a USB powered, 5 V, 8 W, soldering iron.

USB 5 V 8 W Soldering Iron

 

My ‘daily driver’ is a temperature controlled 50 W item which will handle most jobs, large and small, without missing a beat, day after day, and probably cost ten times the cost of the little one.

However, I’d already seen one or two people I know add these little USB irons to their collections, and seen them use them – I was impressed!

So, I placed my order, the Chinese distribution system did its stuff, and my USB iron duly arrived – surprisingly quickly.

If you are tempted, WATCH THE PRICE!

Believe it or not, this item is on sale from many online suppliers, with the price ranging from BELOW £4 to ALMOST £50! I kid you not.

I won’t tell you what I paid – but I’m Scottish, so you should be able to guess :-)

I had been warned about a quirk in their use, which could possibly lead  to a damaging mistake…

Although not visible in the pic above, these irons come with a plastic sleeve which fits over the element to protect it when not in use – it can be seen in the pic below, where it’s been removed from the iron and is lying to its right. If not obvious, the springy looking thing in the pics is a tiny coil of solder which all the suppliers include.

USB 5 V 8 W Soldering Iron Mistake

The ‘mistake’ can be seen if you take a close look at the open end of that plastic sleeve.

It’s a PUSH FIT!

However, you can clearly see the photographer (not me!) has unscrewed it from the iron, which means the metal ferule which secures the element to the body has been removed, and the element is no longer properly secured into the body, and could be easily damaged.

And that where one of my ‘2020 moments’ chose to make its appearance :-(

Being well aware of the screw fit versus push fit of the element and the sleeve, I had correctly PULLED the sleeve off, and carried on to UNSCREW the ferrule, so I could see the whole element and have a look for spares. Although the element is described as replaceable, none of the listing gave a part number, so I intended to check all the types listed until I found a matching item.

This almost worked, until I found the element had been assembled using Chineseum instead of a secure, heatproof fixing or compound.

The element is a simple push fit into the body (once the ferule is unscrewed), but the fit (of mine) was so tight that the plug in part stayed in the body – and the element parted company from it and started to unwind!

Fortunately, although I was applying quite a lot of force, I was being careful, and was able to stop as soon as could see the element had parted from the base, and the connector was still stuck in the body – I was able to push the pieces back together, then lever the element and connect out of the body.

Had this not been a Chinese manufactured ferule, I would have been able to use it to hold the parts together by ensuring it was securely tightened when I refitted the element.

Unfortunately, Chinese manufacturing engineering of metal parts is somewhat infamous for its poor finish of parts which are out of sight, and the interior of the ferule had four big pieces of swarf where the cutting tool has simply been withdrawn from as it reached the bottom of its cut. These four metal ‘peaks’ meant the ferule did not tighten down evenly on the base of the element, and it wobbled all over the place, even when the ferule was tightened as much as was possible.

I though this was going be a loss situation, or that the element would fail as it wobbled and the element would fail.

I think I recovered it by turning down a brass washer to fit inside the ferule, giving the bottom of the element a flat surface to tighten against – at least the wobbling/looseness was cured.

The iron works fine, and has so far managed to drain two 3000 mAh USB power banks, so obviously draws around 1 A in use – meaning it’s closer to 5 W than 8 W.

I dismantled it too, and while the construction/electronics seemed good enough, was a little disappointed to find that the middle of the three mounting posts had broken of with its self-tapping screw firmly embedded. I can’t see how this plastic pillar came to be sheared off (other than the screw being grossly overtightened), and ended up adding a little piece of high density foam to make sure the PCB was supported.

On reflection

Over the years, I’ve had a few of the Iso-Tip cordless soldering irons pictured below.

Iso-Tip cordless soldering irons

While they were undeniably handy, and they worked well, they were also tremendously frustrating.

I forget the claimed operating time, but they didn’t last very long in use, being powered by a pair of C-sized NiCads. The low voltage (2.4 V) meant they drew a fair amount of current, and while this meant they had enough power for fairly large joints, this also drained those cells fairly quickly. They also had to be charged before use, making their almost instant heating not quite so instant, and even the ‘Quick charge’ option still took hours, There was no quick change option either – the cells were screwed into the body.

There’s no denying they heated in seconds, BUT that had to happen for EVERY joint. They couldn’t be left idling, cooled down as soon as your finger was off the button.

They seem to be about $50 in the US (not seen on Amazon when I looked). Then there’re the tips – $4 to $5 each.

Back in the day, I got my money’s worth out of them by converting them into LED torches. While we didn’t have super bright white LEDs back then, we did have green/yellow/amber. The old tech they were made with meant they could be pushed into the terminals where the Iso-Tip elements were supposed to go, and they’d work like dim little candles. Dim they may have been, but with their frugal current consumption and those ‘big’ C cells, they were still better than torches of the day, with their silly glowing wire incandescent bulbs!

There’s also the butane/gas soldering iron option.

These work well too, but I don’t know how long the catalytic tips last. Mine are still going strong, but then again, get very little use.

I have to say, these little USB irons seem to be ideal, and power banks seem to be everywhere – and, as noted about, every 1000 mA h means 1 hour of uninterrupted soldering.

The only qualifier seems to be ‘Not for use on large/heavy joints’ – and those are relatively rare in today’s SMD world.

Postscript

I mentioned my desire for spare elements.

Solved that, but not quite as expected.

I found them listed on Amazon once I had matched the pics to the element I had – at a whopping £4.41 apiece.

MORE than I paid for my iron!

My solution?

I looked again, and found another seller who was selling these irons for even less than I paid for the first one.

For almost £1 LESS than the Amazon price of an element, I’m getting COMPLETE irons (I bought a few spares)- so won’t even have to actually change the element if the first one I abused dies.