Is the Aixun T3A a good T245 soldering station?

How does the Aixun T3A compare to a traditional soldering iron? Let's find out!
**Please Like and Comment if you enjoyed the video, it means a lot to me! 🖖 **

#electronics #repair #soldering #review

@EEVblog forum discussions

00:00 intro
02:40 Unpacking
04:55 Powering on
05:44 Firmware update
06:28 My feedback
07:41 Speed comparison
10:31 Tips swap comparison
13:52 Handle comparison
14:28 Power comparison
17:01 Power comparison 2
20:01 Issue 1: stability
23:45 Issue 2: Grounded board
29:55 Behaviour with 1.33
31:21 Issue 3: handle
31:55 Issue 4: buzzing
32:34 Conclusion

[dannyasia]

I love this review, one of the best I ever see. I have seeing a lot of reviews similar to this one and none came out with this flaw, even with this this specific unit.
Thank man and keep up the good work.

[sdgelectronics]

Interesting firmware issue. I still have a really early firmware version - I think 1.18, and didn't really find any bugs so I wonder how they've made so many revisions and possibly made it worse? JBC won't see the issue with the earthed board as they use proper transformers for the power supply. I think this is why the T420D doesn't show that behaviour.

[minombredepila]

I agree with @dannyasia25 on the review. I'm bored of YouTubers reading the menus option and attached pamphlets. Loved the moment when you said "And a month after...", meaning that you will bring the experience of one month on usage, config, etc... This is quite valuable to me. And yes, I do not change the tip as mine is painful too, ending in very strange "yoga-like" positions. I need to purchase one like this.... one day. But the stellar moment to me was at 17:06 when I could spot the advanced tech you use to keep the spiders controlled: the "No more spiders" spray. Loved this video, as always. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[chuckvoss]

Very good review. You bring up issues that i have never heard of before this.

[unclejohn]

For a non review this is a pretty solid video. You earned a subscriber!

[aleksandardjurovic]

A great review. Thank you. I wish other reviewers are more like you with discovering strengths and weaknesses of the reviewed product.

[MVVblog]

Una review così meriterebbe 1 milione di visual

[goodun]

At 1:10, having used the same exact Aoyue (pronounced A-U) soldering/desoldering station for 5 years (prior to retiring), I can confirm that the Aoyue soldering iron works better with Hakko or other quality tips because the supplied tips are iron or steel throughout, which has poor heat-transfer characteristics compared to the copper tips manufactured by Hakko and a few others. Most of the boatpack tips sold on line or package with knock off soldering irons are similarly made of iron or steel and you can easily verify this with a magnet because the cheap tips will be strongly attracted to the magnet; good quality tips are made of solid copper with iron plating at the pointy end only (iron resists the dissolving effects of molten solder and flux, which would quickly destroy bare copper), and the rest of the tip is plated with chrome to resist solder completely. I have a video on my channel about discerning poor quality tips from good ones with the use of a magnet. By the way although I found the Aoyue soldering iron a little under powered for the type of audio repair work I used to do the desoldering half of the station worked really well, with a couple of minor tweaks and mods to the guns to make them less likely to clog.

[SGRAHMD]

❤ this video is exactly what I wanted to see before buying a soldering station. Thank you for making such an important video. From Bangladesh 🇧🇩

[Zanaz]

Hmmm I didn't know that buying a soldering iron is such a complicated thing. Thanks for the video I've learned a lot..❤

[jasmijndekkers]

Nice soldering station for your job. I love your content as well. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands

[dennishammond]

A great and precise review, quite enjoyable and a awesome learning session for me.
Thank you,
Dennis from Lone Star Texas

[philscomputerlab]

Quearion please. Around 19:00 why is the power output indicator onky showing around 20% and not going higher? I assumed it woild go to 100% and pump in as much heat as possible?

[VKXXL]

I'm really glad I found your video and it sounds like the company are been very pig faced over it. I had just placed an order for an Aixun unit but have now cancelled and decided to just buy a Weller instead. Cheers, Andrew

[arabiccola]

Thank you for this review. I am glad that it was not a click bait after all (somewhere around the middle of the video, doubts were starting to arise). Did you try to run the station through an isolation transformer? I wonder if that will change the erroneous behaviour when the board is grounded.

[GadgetUK]

Surprising issues with that station!!! Great video! I am also wondering about the implications of it not being able to accurately control the temperature at all when whatever you are soldering happens to be grounded... Typically a soldering iron tip is connected to earth, this helps with ESD I think - ie. dissimilar surfaces touching, tips expanding etc can generate potential - I do wonder if because they are clearly doing some active stuff with the tip, that means it isn't connected to earth - does that increase the chance that it could create some kind of ESD scenario?!?

[nccdeee]

Oh no, I just ordered a soldering iron from Aliexpress a few days ago. Aifen A9 Pro (Sugon). I didn't really look at the Aixun T3A. I hope it doesn't have similar issues as this Aixun T3A. Informative video, thanks.

[thealphageek]

Thanks again Tony. I've been looking at getting a cartridge station to compliment my traditional Hakko. Really appreciate the thorough analysis!

[edic]

Thanks for this video. I want to buy this unit, but now I will do extra research to understand the issues. Great video.

[dgakadoug]

On the grounding issue:
Though I have never actually seen one in "real life" I've seen photos of the guts of several of the new breed of solder station. Most use switchmode power supplies. That's fine if the supply is well designed, but from what I can tell from the photos many are not. They are relatively crude and would be unlikely to pass the requirements for either safety agency approval or EMI/RFI control. (I've designed a lot of switchers for industrial use.)
My suspicion with the grounding problem is that noise from the power supply gets coupled into the temperature sensing path differently depending on how the tip is grounded. Again the manufacturer seems to have hacked a way to cover up bad design.

On soldering:
I've watched a few videos of "how to solder" on YouTube. A couple that were "common errors" types were filled with bad advise and evidence that the creators of the videos were not competent solderers. Another that I thought was good, and it was in many ways, still showed a significant failure of method.
I've also seen a lot of videos where people slop gobs of flux all over the landscape because they don't know how to use cored solder properly. _Sometimes_ extra flux is a very big help. In most electronics work it is completely unnecessary.