TS100 review FOLLOWUP

[LokiCDK]

Hey Louis! Appreciate your candor. One of the things I appreciate about you is that you're not afraid of your mistakes, or to make good on them.

[BlackFoxInc]

Rossman is a dude with integrity and a proper mindset. Absolutely love this dude.

[oldmarinevaughn]

that is what i like about you Louis, you are one of the Good Guys

[rarsn]

Louis, even if you buy it through Banggood, it appears it's still shipping from the US. It says "warehouse" and US is selected with an estimated shipping time of 3-7 business days.

By the way, I really appreciate the video on this, I'm definitely interested in picking one of these up and I probably wouldn't have found it without your original video. I caught the tail end of the stream and it sounded somewhat interesting but I did some more digging and it sounds like a great little iron. I am currently using that shitty tip over heating element-style garbage and frankly I'm bleeping sick of it but I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to replace it just yet, so this at the very least could be a great stop-gap.

Always love your videos, can't thank you enough, keep up the good work, etc. And as always,

[mavericm]

we use these irons a lot in the FPV MINIQUAD (racing drones) community they are amazing for portability just hook up your lipo to it and start soldering in seconds when you need to make repairs

[raywelshman]

@Louis, Hi you say the power jack is non standard, this is not so, this one is 5.5mm X 2.5mm inner pin, which is standard for higher current, the one you tried was 5.5mm X 2.1mm, you will find most high current 19V laptop PSU around 4A use this,
regarding sleep you can set this in the menu to go to sleep after a time you set also set the temp for the sleep mode..
Regards, Ray, North Wales (UK)

[spokehedz]

Imagine if someone made a 3D printed adapter that would let you put two irons at once to give you hot tweezers. Man, that would be SICK!

[notjulesatall]

Hi Louis, if you enjoyed the TS100 then you might wanna have a look at the Pinecil. It's a community-focused soldering iron based on the TS100's design with a few improvements including proper rubber grip and USB-C for power delivery (making it compatible with basically any USB-C laptop charger).

[leisergeist]

The third(?) link on Amazon comes with the BC2 chisel tip rather than the conical tip, for the same price
It's the smaller chisel though, but at least it's not a damn conical

[ZeroG]

I just love that you make a video right after the last one and do an even better job at showing and reviewing a product. By now I know you have little tolerance for stupid people or people saying stupid stuff, so I understand your frustration on yourself for going with "other information" on the other video, but somehow I felt that after the first "that was stupid of me" you had as all on your side. Like no-one does this in youtube and everyone acts like they are right all the time... So this was very refreshing. I think you have some "Howard Stern moments" like in the movie, where you are very straight forward and honest and it comes out just... Human. And I think this was your best one yet. Just what people like to hear from an actual "tech channel"! Just don't be too hard on yourself. :)

PS. I have a 10yo "plug-in-to-wall-socket-iron" that I've used for some stuff... mostly for burning components if I'm not careful... So I'm getting a TS100! The fact I could take it everywhere I go and power it with a battery or from a car. I think that's a game changer. Thanks Louis. I hope there is a link for EU buyers that you get a kickback or a little something something from.

[ekaa.]

Granted if you don't have a bench power supply, getting one to power the TS100 kills two birds with one stone. I first used a surplus 24VDC brick type power supply I had laying around. Now I have a pair of dedicated TS100 powering jacks on my home made 24VDC bench power supply. Both are hard limited to 3 Amps draw. A too low resistance tip, like a failed one, can cause more than 5 Amps to be drawn and thus blow the output FET in the TS100.

Current draw is only set by the resistance of the heating element. Lower power supply voltages will have lower current draw.

Tweezers tips, brush up on your chop stick use, and use two TS100s with their tips grounded to your common ground point. ;) I use a pair of TS-K tips for tweezers use. You can also hold one TS100 in each hand.

The tip I use the most is the TS-D24. On the Wahl micro soldering station I formerly used tips that were closest to the TS-BC2 chisel tip. I don't like how the tips have that sharp change in diameter up near the active part of the tip. Tin that area well. I killed a tip quickly by flux settling in there and eating the metal away. About 1/3rd of the cross section of the tip by the base of the conical section is eaten away, and it only took a month of demolition of excess PCBs. There was a lot of 400C boost use.* I also drilled a very small diagonal hole through a TS-D24 to provide a solder well in it. It works nicely for doing legged chips using the swipe surface mount soldering method. I'm considering getting a few of the big chisel tip and modifying them to suit my uses.

I like the ergonomics, but it could be better. Also it has been an adjustment getting used to a heavier soldering iron wand with heavier cable going to it. I formerly used a Wahl IsoTip micro soldering station. The whole wand weighed less than 11 grams and wasn't much different than using a pen or pencil. In fact I used my favorite pencil grip on it. The replaceable tip on the TS100 weighs 10.5 or so grams. Sadly the Wahl was from before heavy ground planes so it failed badly with them. Also it only had 13 Watts draw from the wall outlet.

To get a grounded tip, you have to connect up the ground screw by the power jack to your common grounding point. I made a cable for mine by twisting three 18AWG silicon wires from spools I had on hand. I have power and power return going to the 2555 plug, and an earth ground lead going to the ground screw by the power jack. Use the rope makers trick of keeping the wires from twisting as you twist them around each other. That way the resulting cable will lay flat or hang nicely and not twist up. I also used 1/8" long heat shrink bands every few inches to also help hold the wires together. I didn't heat shrink tube the whole thing because it would have made it much stiffer.

* I am using the Ralim open source firmware. It's available at GitHub.

[Magic-Smoke]

Great response Louis! It’s easy for us to forget that while we know your deliver content with good humour, perhaps it’s harder to see that (most of us) have well-intentioned feedback. Thanks for doing this so well. Btw, my TS-100 takes the occasional nap when I ignore it for too long, it’s a great power-saving feature since I feed mine from solar-charged LiFePO4 much of the time

[John-nugx]

Love the recommendation Louis, ordered mine from Amazon and got it in only 2 days. Keep up great work

[cyclenutus]

Louis, great 2 videos. Those of us that fly rc planes/drones/helis have been using the ts100 for a while. The drone guys found it first with their affinity for all things Banggood. The ts100 beats the pants off of a bench top setup especially given its portability and ability to be powered off of a battery in the field. With the open source firmware there is a lot of tuning you can do down to putting your own custom logo on the splash screen.

[AttilaTheHun]

This is exactly why I trust your word so much...you are not afraid to admit that you were wrong.

[Foche_T._Schitt]

I don't do this kind of work but I will need to replace my ancient Weller some day and will keep this little iron in mind.
Someone also linked a KSGER STM32 which looked interesting.

[MrAsylumEscapee]

Waiting (im)patiently for new tools video as I am ready to buy a lot of stuff to start a new business. Still looking for a few things

[DangerousPictures]

I use an old 19 v laptop power supply for my TS 100 with an b2 tip and had no problems so far.

[Gameboygenius]

The TS100 is a good iron, especially for the price. I'd still recommend completing it with the following accessories: A good flexible cord that doesn't get in the way all the time. A stand. A brass sponge for keeping the tip clean. Although as you pointed out, it IS an expandable investment if you're broke and starting out. For me, the VERY small size was appealing, for taking with me when I'm traveling, along with other necessities like a small scredriver set, a swiss army knife and a torch for power outages. (Size wise, the PSU comes for "free" with my laptop.)

Also, the software hackability could be a plus, even if I haven't looked into it personally. You could optimize the PID curve for different jobs, for example if you were alternating a lot between really sensitive components (where you don't want temperature overshoot for some reason) and big ground planes. You could set it up to log the temperature in real time over USB. Niche uses, sure, but I don't know any other iron on the market, period, that offers any of that.

[aterack]

You can also use tips from certain other irons, some directly some with a 3D printed or milled or carved adapter