What JBC soldering station for microsoldering

Hi,

I have one of these. Great station for through hole and medium size SMD, but if you need to do a lot of micro soldering you would be better off with the CD-S station. The base station is the same, but the set comes with the T210 handle. This one is smaller and takes the smaller tips designed for soldering smal smd components.

Check the JBL website, there’s a new CDE-S station coming with cool new features.

Regards, Eelco

Hi,

For smaller and standard tasks, I use the JBC T210 handle with a station that I made with a toroidal transformer and a 13 euro controller from China. This T210 handle is sufficient for something like 90 percent of the work. For other things, I use Hakko FM-2028 handle (T12 tips) with a similarly made DIY station. Why Hakko? Well, the main reason is the availability of special tips as knock-offs. For example, I have three spatula type tips (40 mm, 20 mm, and 10 mm wide) and use these quite often (to cover the whole board with solder or to de-solder a large pin array component, etc.). The thing is, that for JBC no such tips are available as knock-offs, only originals. For my Hakko, an original 40 mm spatula tip costs something like 150 euros, but I bought a knock-off for about 25 euros. That is 6 times cheaper! And it performs flawlessly. For JBC, no such copies are available, you would have to spend a fortune to buy the original JBC tip. And for these big tips, it really not so important anymore, what station is used, because they have a very large thermal capacity anyways and melt anything there is to melt. So, my recommendation is JBC T210 handle for most of the things and Hakko FM-2027 or FM-2028 for other things.