Hello!
So I decided, as a way to improve my cad skills, that I would take an old laptop of mine and design a case around the motherboard and use it as a micro PC in my work area. I have nearly all of it designed, just shy of the power button.
On account of not having a sautering iron, I would rather avoid sautering a button on and was trying to go a more analogue approach by printing a button into the case that could maybe use a compliant mechanism to press in and come back out, but I am very uncertain how to go about it.
Any help appreciated
I’ll suggest Weller irons as a solid alternate as well, pretty much the only irons I’ve used in the last decade or so, mainly because the job I soldered in a lot used Wellers, had some lower end variable ones beat to hell in field bags that still run perfect today (actually my dedicated insert iron). I have a WE1010NA that I use now and it’s a solid tool.
The issue with Weller is their price in a competitive market.
Considering no alternative the entry level Weller is fine. Ersa has their awesome itool with this really short distance between soldering iron tipp and finger grip: https://ts.kurtzersa.com/electronics-production-equipment/soldering-tools-accessories/soldering-desoldering-stations/produkt-details/i-con-pico-1.html
Performance: Weller and Ersa are more or less equal. For generic solder joints both are great. If there are high thermal mass and it isn’t possible to use a large tipp than the Hakko T12 is the superior technology. Changing tips on the Ersa (while not recommended by the manufacturer) can be done with the iron heated up and tool free within 5 seconds.
Ergonomics: 100% Ersa. The only reason it has been my daily driver for half a decade and is here to stay. Before this station I actually had a Weller.
JBC has a similar tool handle to the Ersa but those are very expensive with little benefit.
The price to performance king are genuine Hakko T12 tipps with a China station.
You can’t do a lot of things with other irons like you can with a 900 tip, especially with 3d printing. There are hundreds of specialties. Like I have tips for ribbon cables, a Xacto blade holder, common heatset inserts installation tools, but also the specialty threaded removal tools from McMaster. That is in addition to all of my specialty soldering tips.
I’ve been tempted in the past to go to a faster heating setup for my rework station, probably a T12, but instead I made my own circuit boards for mine. I have the old digital soldering station from RadioShack. It is a 900 series clone from Atten that uses a 2 wire element with the thermocouple in series with the element. I mase circuit boards that offset the element to contact one side of the tip and adjusted it to extend closer to the end of the tip bore. I also modified my station to have dual irons so that I do not need to change tips often, I just swap irons with a switch.
I think a case for a different setup can be made for soldering, but for 3d printing, there is no replacement for the number of options available for crafting extras and heatset inserts options. Like I wouldn’t do iterative designs with heatset inserts in many cases if I had no ability to remove them.
Totally fair, on the tip side I’ll totally admit I’ve modified some to fit in my older Weller station I use as a dedicated heatset iron, it has heater cartridge that’s semicircular so the tips run the length of the iron. That said, I mainly do through hole and connector soldering, I’m not doing a lot of precision work, pretty much grabbed it because I was familiar with the iron and knew that it’d be comfortable for me. Think I use my heatset iron the most out of anything tbf, got me thinking about tools to recover inserts, that’d be super nice to have.