Figured I’d share this, as its one of my many but funnier blunders.
Both me and my brother tend to get each other identical christmas gifts; it’s happened multiple times and we always get a laugh out of it. Last time we both bought each other new Hakko FX-888D soldering irons. The ‘D’ denotes digital control.
That said, since my Weller WTCP was hurting with a break in the wire, I was excited to have a new, fully-working iron.
So I get it on the bench, and start messing around with it, and realized the temp was set a little low, so I bump it up a little bit as it was struggling to melt solder. Again it still seemed to be struggling so I cranked it up a little more, and even at a solder-boiling 850 it just didn’t perform well, and eventually I just chalked it up to being new, having a new tip, needing to break in, whatever. I’ve used it a handful of times since then, but resorted back to my WTCP iron as it just didn’t seem to be working right. (I still LOVE the WTCP btw.)
Eventually I attempted to check the temp with an actual thermocouple, and while its difficult to get a decent reading, the highest it got was in the 500’s, far from the 850 it was set to. I figured it was likely defective.
A few days ago I was rooting around in my junk drawer and came across the user manual for it. I realized I never had any luck with it and maybe I should reach out to Hakko as there had to be something wrong. I flipped through the manual, and the answer came to me: I was changing the CALIBRATION, not the actual temp! Both are nearly identical procedures, but one starts with the enter key (temp), and one starts with the up key (cal). In my defense, one would think the “up” button changes the actual temp!
All the calibration does is change the DISPLAY for the set temp, so I was likely at 600 degrees, and kept setting it higher trying to get it to solder, when in reality it was still at 600.
I since did a factory reset, and turned up the actual temp, and now it’s working great and I can actually use it. I may pick up a soldering iron calibrator some day to properly set it.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one to do this; Hakko has a bulletin explaining the difference on their web site: http://kb.hakkousa.com/KnowledgebaseArticle11663.aspx
Perhaps on the FX-889D, they’ll properly label the buttons š
Moral of the story: RTFM – Read the f—riggin manual!