Weller TCP Soldering Iron - Magnastat

[factory]

Originally Posted by Craig Sawyers

The modern Weller TCP cable is rubbish. On mine the inner cores disintegrated. They crumbled like biscuit and shorted out.

Then the transformer melted - it is wound with solderable insulation, so really low temperature rated. Look at it the wrong way and it becomes one shorted turn with loadsa smoke. The fact that the fuse is 3A means nothing. In the maybe 10 seconds it takes to blow it can easily put 1kW into the transformer to fuel the smoke generation.

In spite of sending them photos, they walked away. Refused point blank to replace anything FOC. Out of guarantee they said. So much for German engineering or after care.

I will never darken Weller's door again.

Craig

Some have no fuse, not even a thermal fuse in the windings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUtj-bWHeKY

Clearly they need a product recall for those, the cable on a newer one at work failed the exact same crumbly way.
We got around it by swapping the cable from an old scrap TCP with the Bulgin connector and using it with an older PSU.

We are replacing the soldering equipment at work, the engineer was looking at Weller stuff, until I reminded him the new ones were a load of crap. Instead we are getting a Metcal station, tips are already here, but company budget restrictions mean the expensive part will be ordered in April.

David

[Craig Sawyers]

I swapped across to Metcal (I needed something decent for SM work), and Weller will never ever darken my workbench again.

And yes - I can give first hand evidence of the lack of thermal fuse in the TCP transformer, when it melted down with copious acrid smoke. A real engineered down to a minimum cost at maximum price heap of dingo's kidneys.

Product recall? When I presented photographic evidence to Weller Germany, they just walked away. Tough luck, customer.

Craig

[Longespee]

Craig, exactly the same happened with my ( 2005 ) WTCP 51 just last week, mid soldering the fuse in the IEC blew, so I disconnected the iron re-fused and off it went to core meltdown again, the cause was the iron cable at the bonded din plug end where the cable was one big short.

Ironically I had wanted when I got time, to check this plug but as it looked ok and a real job to dismantle I didn't, I even had a mini Bulgin ready !!!.

Really not sure whether to carry on with another Tx or quit Weller for good.

[CambridgeWorks]

Sometimes in the past, I lifted the earth connection and put a 100k or similar in series.
Gave a static earth protection without causing a short to earth if working on gear that was accidentally left powered "on" transistor gear.
Rob

[Wellertcp]

It does seem that with Weller, older is better. I'm not sure what Carl Weller would make of it all.
I've got one of the very old black Weller stations; made in Horsham, still works perfectly.

[Oldmadham]

Originally Posted by QQVO6/40

Greetings all.

Nominal mains voltage here is 230V +10% to -6%.
Or so the wiring rules AS3000 has to say.
Many power suppliers here look on that as a very rough guide.I did run a power conditioner here for a while but it was too noisy so I now use a solid bucking transformer to drop the mains down to around 215V to 220V.
Everything seems to float along nicely with this setup.

Because my TCP was made here in Australia it is rated for 240V which was our old standard mains voltage till they decided to align our stuff with Europe.

I am not sure if it is the same now but years ago some remote towns in Western Australia had a nominal 260V. Ouch!

I will see if I can get my camera out tomorrow and take a pic or 3 of my setup.

Gotta go as it is 25 minutes into April Fools day.
Going beddy bye.

Cheers.
Robert, VK2BNM.

All of Western Australia was supposed to be 250v, not 240 as in the Eastern States.

The 4% difference was never a problem with stuff made in Australia to the 240v standard, including light globes.

Suppliers decided it was cheaper & more profitable to stop making them & import inferior ones which would last a fifth of the time.

There was then a lot of agitation that the 250v supply was "killing light globes", so at great expense, the voltage was reduced to 240v.
The cruddy imported light globes still had terrible longevity!