JBC-clone - SMD-Tweezer soldering station

after the first and very convincing experience with the ´fast heating´ T12 soldering station, a couple of JBC soldering stations were bought for my employee.

The JBCs are of course a different animal than a cheap chinese thingie.

Soldering with these stations appears considerably more easy, saisfactory and fun.

So when my T12-cheapie died I started looking for a JBC or alike fast-heater station.

JBC would have been my favourite but what spoils the fun is the cost of those stations and the matching soldering tips. Especially the last couple of years the price of even the simplest JBC station raised easily plus dozens of % to more than 600€, without any functional upgrades or obvious improvements.

Meanwhile the Chinese noticed also the advantages of the tip-heated fast cartridge system of JBC and began to copy and sell cheap clones.

As typical the quality of those clones varied between ok, soso and plain catastrophy.

Some chinese stations copy the look and feel down to the cartridge tips, even if one can´t use original JBC-tips in a clone station any longer or chinese tips in a JBC station.

Among the better copiers that still allow for an interchange between original and copy is Sugon/Aifen. They added functionality like more temperature presets and better displays and useful readout capabilities to their stations, and recently introduced a dual-controller SMD-tweezer station featuring C210 tips and a single-controller for theuseage of C245 and C210 handles.

The Aifen A99HD can be bought from their AliXpress store with Tweezer handle, C210 and C245 hadle and 10 tips of various styles for less than a original JBC SMD-Tweezer handle alone!

The A99HD is a SMPS powered station, but doesn´t show any issues when the tip hits gnd.

The plastik feels a knack less solid than with JBC and the weight is considerably lower.

The tweezers mechanics are less refined and less precise than their JBC counterpart, but they do their job of soldering and desoldering SMD resistors and caps very well, much faster, better and easier than one could do with just a single handle tip.

I only wished one could simply change between tweezer and single handle mode easily. 

The procedure of changing tips and tweezer mode is a bit cumbersome.

But how brilliant that would be ... to switch between handles just by button action or even simpler by just picking up the required handle from it´s stand.

Since the stands are sensing the handle and use it to send the tip into sleep or to wake it up, I see no reason why it should not be possible to do with multiple stands, tips and a tweezer.

Anyway, with the A99HD Sugon/Aifen offer a highly flexible and useful soldering station in decent quality at a remarkably low price .... I repeat ... less than a single JBC tweezer handle alone!

Now that I have worked with the station a couple of days and also taken it to work so my colleague could also test it, I can say that this little device is simply great fun to work with. My colleague also said he´d prefer this station over the Wellers any time now.

update feb.2021:

The little soldering station which is branded YUANHE T12A Soldering Station  btw.  has proven its useability. It utilizes a STC µController and runs a Vers. 2.1 firmware. As mentioned earlier this station doesn´t feature the 3-point tip calibration of the KSGER, but at least a single point calibration. (note by: its of course an adjustment and not a calibration). This became neccessary because the temperature of the tips was way too high in the beginning, beeing almost 40°C up at 330°C setting.

Having no manual and with differing menues to other T12 stations it took me a while to figure out how to calibrate up to 5 tips.

But first a couple of pics of the displays.

After switch-on the station shows its main display with the following parameters:

-upper row:  Set temperature / number of chosen tip (0-4) / actual time

- middle row: actual tip temperature

- lower row: supply voltage of the internal power supply / bargraph and figure indicating the percentage of supplied power

Pressing the button on the right longer than ~1sec the display changes to the main menue where You can choose from five sub-menues. Temperature calibration is the third down.

Scroll down to Temp calibration and press the button shortly. A sub-menue opens where You can choose from 5 different tips (Select iron, 0-4). The chosen number appears in the main display right to the set temperature figure.

Scroll down to =0...4 # Cali. and press the button. A number appears on the right, indicating the percentage of power  supplied to achive a certain tip temperature.

Now how to adjust the tip temperature such that set temperature and actual displayed temperature match?

There are videos on Youtube offering several methods. What worked for me was to use the K-type temperature probe supplied with a multimeter.

Fix the probe so that You can later rest the tip on it. Choose the set temperature You usually work with ... 330°C in my case. Let the tip heat up and melt a small blob of solder. Place the tip on the probe so that the solder wets the probe well. Allow some time for the temperature to settle. The last 5°C settling takes rather long. Compare the probe reading with the displayed tip temerature.

Switch to the calibration menue, choose the right probe number and adjust the percentage value.

Switch back to the main display and compare temperature values again.

Repeat the adjustment steps till the temperature values are close enough for Your taste.

Since there are dozens of different tips available for this station and You just can adjust only for 5 different types, it may be best to ´group´ similar shaped and sized tips as they will probabely be very close in their temperature behaviour. I mark the calibration number on the different tips with a felt pen.

After the adjustment the tip reaches the set temperature within 5°C tolerance in just a few seconds, slowing down in speed after.

Apart from the PID settings which I have not yet evaluated in their behaviour (preset values 5, 5, and 5) the other menue settings are straightforward and easy to set.

This little station -remember it costed only ~35€, two tips included-  never fails to amaze me with its speed and precision.

After the experience with these kind of soldering stations resp. solder tips, my colleague and I decided to order a JBC CD-2BE from Welectron for work. Of course it costs 10 times of my T12A and for one JBC tip I can order ten of my tips, but the JBC is clearly a professional station, heating up even faster, putting out more power on demand, features a softer cable and a better lighter handle, it´s tip temperature is adjusted right from start (+-2°C) and it adds some more very practical features. It certainly is worth its price and I´m really tinkering with the thought to buy me one for personal use. On the other hand the T12A is perfectly ok for hobby use.