KSGER T12 Soldering Station

[Audio]

A close friend recommend this to me.

I bought this item from Aliexpress at $68.

This is a good DIY tool but is a sad case of mass production without close monitoring.

Surprisingly quick delivery, it arrived only a couple of days upon placing my order.  My bundle was for the Soldering Station plus 5 soldering tips of various tip configurations.

Upon power up, there was an "ERROR" message and the tip was stone cold.  I went to google and true enough, there has been a lot of complaints.
I opened up the handle to examine the contacts and discover that the tip could not be inserted fully and hence the issue.  I only get it to work by remove a part of the barrel that prevented the tip from being fully inserted into the handle.  ( You can see the removed barrel on the right side of the picture).

Now it works and the tip zoomed up to 350 C in a blink of an eye, (about 5 seconds) and melt solder easily.  It maintain the tip temperature and give you a continuous tip temperature display.

I am happy with this purchase and would recommend this to our DIY community if they do soldering at home.

(Audio)

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[DIYer Straits]

One thing that I noticed about these clones is that the parts quality are usually below par.

For instance, I bought a Hakko 936 clone for peanuts after my 20 year old Weller started showing it's age. It took too bloody long to fire up and the temperature tend to fluctuate.

Instead of buying a new board for it, yeah, cheap as chips on TB, I decided on the popular 936.

It worked as advertised and heated up well. Problem was that the parts quality for the soldering iron was not up to my standards. The soldering barrel was too thin and deformed. I replaced it with a spare from another iron. I was surprised that they fit!

Then the tip. The one that came with the iron lasted 2 weeks of daily work until it started to disintegrate...expected. Cheap what. So I bought a original tip from a Hakko dealer in Sim Lim Tower. Problem solved.

Overall, these clones are as good as the real McCoy but to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The set cost me $33, free shipping. The tip cost me $12.

 

[Audio]

Thanks for your feedback.

Frankly, I am still using my Antex before this.  I got a couple as these are the best soldering irons I owned.  I kept away from the high tech Weller and Hakko stuff because I don't do soldering often enough.  It's a shame as I got great soldering skills acquired when I was 9 years old.

(Audio)

 

[synthesis]

No fancy solder for me. Inexpensive 40W solder for general soldering normally for crossover components and 60W solder for thicker speaker binding post. As for the solder itself, I'm happy with Asahi solder, Alloy 60/40 1mm dia. Nice flow with shiny look.

 

[DJQ]

Since my Panasonic days. i always liked the Metcal Solder station. the older model.

so i managed to grab a used one when someone back in XPL was selling it. since original metcal tips are exp, i got cheaper OKI ones.