USB soldering iron [SOLVED]

Hey guys

Just curious, does anyone know whether it’s ok to use those USB soldering irons that are coming with makerbuino kits with a USB charger adapter? I read online that you should use a powerbank because other wise they may cause damage to the PCB or something, is this true? I don’t have a powerbank and don’t really wanna buy one just for the soldering iron.

Cheers

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The damage from mains USB is often that there’s a path for Mains right the way through to the soldering tip. Bigclive on YouTube did a good review of a USB soldering iron.

looks like someone has made a fix video now too

It’s best to run them from a battery pack to avoid accidentally sending mains through a component! I haven’t had time to watch the fix video, but if it’s viable, great!

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Unfortunately, it looks like the fix video is a repair for a broken power button only. :disappointed:
The review and teardown one is great, though.

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Thanks for the comments and the videos guys, so long story short I’ll need a powerbank you think?

@Spark17 yeah, it looks like those of us who want to use the USB soldering iron will have to use power banks I guess

damn! haha. thanks anyway guys

Hi All
i use regularly this USB solder since i have already,
Work pretty fine with big power bank and with power adaptor with more than 1 A ( even if required is 1.6 as i remember ), for instance the one of iPhone work without issue. Best solution for me is using the multiple USB charger from Ikea, that have 3.5 A .
Only attention: don’t keep on all time because become really hot, i’m evaluating to create a controller for it with temperature regulation.

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Oh so I’m not out of luck!! Thank you for the comment

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@Spark17 @gloomycats @ecasti @Sub
Thank you for pointing this out, I’ve never seen this review and I didn’t notice this issue.
Everybody pleases chill, 35uA of current is really not a dangerous amount and I can assure you that you can solder 95% of common hobbyist electronic components with this soldering iron without damaging the components because of the unisolated soldering tip.
I and my colleagues have soldered numerous MAKERbuinos with this soldering iron and they were undamaged. In fact, boards and kits made for makers and hackers (e.g. Arduino boards) are made pretty robust and you’ll have a hard time breaking them (especially the 8-bit MCU’s on them, I’ve managed to completely break just a couple of them in my hardware hacking career).

The only thing you have to be aware of is that these soldering irons must be plugged in a USB adapter that can supply at least 1.5A of current and a 2A supply would be optimal. The soldering iron work fine with some desktops and laptops and from my testing there is really not a pattern and the only way to know if it works is to either check your computer’s motherboard’s datasheet or just plug in the soldering iron and see whether it’s getting enough power to heat properly and melt solder at a decent rate.

In fact, this unisolated soldering tip problem can be found in many cheap soldering irons powered with 230 or 110V (you’re not going to get electrocuted with 230V but on some cheap models there is usually a small leakage sufficient for powering an LED similar to what the guy was telling in the video. In other words, your “regular” soldering iron might be doing the same thing without you actually knowing it.

P.S. I don’t really understand the theory behind this “voltage leakage” that is happening when plugging the USB soldering iron in a 5V power adapter, can somebody please shortly explain it to me. Thanks!

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Hi there! I am using an iPad adapter for the USB soldering iron but it´s not warming up… even the red LED is shining.
Is it worth to repair, buy a new/bit better one (not so expensive, recommendations?)/get a working one from Albert?:cry:

I used the usb soldering iron, everything was fine and i used a samsung phone charger.

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@juagicre, sorry for my late reply.
I apologize for the non-working iron.
Did you send an email to contact@makerbuino.com? I think you didn’t PM me here on the forum. Did you get a new iron?

@jordantheranga, thank you for pointing that out.

I use mine all the time with a pd plugged into mains. Never had a problem

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