On Monday 03 May 2004 01:23 pm, Stefan Trethan wrote:
> > And how would you suggest doing that? I'm not talking about a "soldering
> > station" here, which were still fairly pricey when I was buying this
> > stuff.
> > I'm talking about the ∗cheap∗ stuff. And a reduction in temperature was
> > accomplished by placing a diode in series with the iron, running it at
> > half power...
> I see... well stations are not much more expensive (maybe 2x to 3x)
> and they are worth the money.
Not these days. They used to be quite a bit more expensive than they are now.
> You can easily build your own i reckon, it's just a triac and a few other
> parts after all.
Not the ones I'm thinking of -- what you describe sounds pretty much like a
light dimmer would be, and I don't see any reason not to use one of those
rather than going to the trouble of building one, if you wanted to go that
way. But what I was thinking of were the ones that had temperature
regulation built into them, where a thermal load on the tip of the iron
would crank up the heating element a bit, to maintain proper temperature,
according to where you had it set.
> Supply it with rectified (and cap. filtered) AC and you get the necessary
> "plus" in power for enabling the control loop to work - so you can still use
> your 110VAC heater.
Control loop? Where's the feedback portion of it?