Almost a copy

I searched “ project farm soldering iron” and this was the first video lol

It's so good, the "Made in" parts could have been the same guy 😅

We’re gonna test that

It's the British version

Yep the "We're going to test that" Line took me from suspicion to laughter in an instance.

I was just going to say that! I love Project Farm and Tom, so this was great! On a side note, I have a simple Weller WES51 and I love it. It doesn't have a digital display, but I felt I could save some money and didn't really need the display.

Yeah had to check which channel I was on

It came to me as he said where the products are from. 🤣

@@WhiteG60 I got that vibe from "this product is made in China" etc.

"We're gonna test that!"

Lol, yeah that's not a coincidence

@@lordratner yeah, after I got to the end, I realized that lol. :)

Haha I love his omage to project farm. There's no way he doesn't also watch the heck out of that channel.

Omg I wasn't the only one who felt that vibe eh? Lol.

I bought a harbor freight one about 15 years ago, it still works great too lol

@@keldonator I bought one a few months back from HF. Ended up not being consistent with the heating and the solder ended up cooling on the tip and when I pulled it back, ruined a $300 circuit board by ripping the copper wiring out of a rare part.

@@Dan-gj1hz u must have done something wrong there. dont try to do things like those again, because u have other specialitys like that.

After 43 years it is still my goto soldering tool. Heating elements are still available and I have a box full of different tips. No need to "upgrade".

I love mine, works flawlessly, get one of the tips sets, the half moon works much better on thicker wires. Also it mentioned in passing, but you can hook it up to a battery pack of suitable wattage, meaning you can us it in the field and don't need wall power.

@@CF_Sapper Hey I've got a question. How long did your Pinecil take to get shipped to you? I've been waiting for over a month and still no Pinecil. :(

@@andrewhamop6665 I was part of the second production run, and from order time to receive was about a month give or take a week. It comes from China so I usually order stuff like that and it arrives when it arrives. I keep tabs on it if it seems like a sketchy company but this company is reliable just be patient and keep an eye on the tracking. If its longer that 2 months reach out to them there may be a shipping issue due to the current situation worldwide.

@@CF_Sapper Hi, did you order it from the pine64 website?

@@majidaskari8306 Yes, thats the only place I would order it from.

Project Farm is the best. Good on Thomas.

This is what I do. I use the Weller W1010E at work everyday. Its great. I was using the Weller WES51, and for an older machine it works just as well.

Bigger pro tip: use a larger diameter tip for large diameter wire; instead of the tiny one shown in the video

@@nonam3007 and a bigger one on top: dont do like holding ur tip to the insulation, because there wont be any insulation after heating that wire. so bigger tip, like the diameter of wire and heating up by hitting core is the real deal.

I just put some solder on the tip and that increases surface area and heat transfer by a lot.

It has the same screen layout too.

Thanks for pointing this out!

Totally. Also upgraded from an Ersa iron to the i-Con Pico last year. Such a pleasure to work with. Especially when working on smaller stuff like SMDs.

I have the nano and use it every day on my desk. Ersa probably has the best stations with the flagship i-con 2 being one on the beat on the market.

Two questions for you Ersa fans: Do you use the soldering iron of the pico? Or do you have an alternative? To me it makes the handle of the iron way too hot. (I'm talking about the cheap soldering iron holder that comes with the pico. Not the nicer one that comes with the nano. ) That's my biggest issue with the ersa. And yes, the fast heatup time is just amazing and perfect for me.

@@PenPeng Mine isn't hot. My guess you've cranked up the temperature bit too high. Personally I usually don't go above 315-325C (using 60/40 solder). Never changed tips for ~6years I have this station. Can't even think of other iron that could be more comfortable than this.

yep Hakko T12 tips are longer but compatible with ts100 and pinecil and the t12 tip clones are cheap and comes in a wider variety of shape. It's a bit of a shame that those new gen hakko stations are not tested in the video because integrating the sensor inside the tip makes the temp more accurate and quicker to adjust by the station.

Yup , feel exactly the same, it's effing AMAZING .

Love my Hakko, best iron i have ever owned

+1 for the TS100. I‘m surprised that this is not part of the comparison. Great form factor, great price and it runs customizable firmware.

@@slickheisenberg8208 The Pinecil is pretty much its successor. Tips are compatible and it has a barrel jack besides that USB C Port.

The one issue I have with my TS100 is that it just doesn't have the thermal performance of my old iron -- it heats up fast but doesn't seem to have the follow through to really deal with large copper areas. For everything else though, I love it a lot.

This is true. I've had the Ersa i-con nano for some years now and used it a lot. Great product, never had any regrets spending a bit extra.

This is true. I have one for a few years now. I'm just a bit shocked about the price hike...

Finding tips 10 years in the future is a bigger deal than people realize. If you go with any 'production' soldering iron company like Weller, Metcal, or even Hakko, you'll be able to get tips and heating elements well into the future, and can probably use the same parts from the past. I have a TS-100 I bought on a whim but never use it outside of soldering things outdoors, like in the car or working on antennas. The interface is fine, but it's a bit much. With my benchtop station the only time I need to touch the base is to turn the temp up or down a bit. I use the same solder and the tip holds the temperature really well, so I don't even need to change the temp very often. Just turn it on and by the time I'm set up it's ready to go.

I don't rate Weller very highly, they're okay for light use, but not for everyday soldering. Metcal is much more durable and almost impossible to break even with constant use for years.

@@hhin Exactly. We switched from Weller to Ersa at work, about 10 years ago. Never had any serious problems since then, and it is very comfortable to use and powerful enough. With the Wellers we had various software issues, the tip holders constantly breaking, etc...

Lol I did exactly the same

Update us on it Greg! I'm tempted too 👀

@@drmed92 It should be here in a few days, I'll update when I get it and get the chance to test it out :)

@@drmed92 Got to play with it a bit this weekend - the tip that it comes with works really well for most things, but you may also want a chisel tip if you're working with larger SMD components (it's compatible with pretty much any tip that works on the TS100) Overall, super happy with it. I ended up 3d printing an enclosure for it, too, where I can keep it and the tips once everything cools off after I'm done using it

100% this. I had a $90 Snap-On butane one before I bought the TS100. The TS100 is sooooo much better at a fraction of the cost.

the pinecil is basically a ts100 v2, same tips, can be powered over usb-c pd and the barrel jack, comes with ralim firmware by default and costs less than half, even with shipping. and you can get spare parts, unlike the ts100 (my case cracked once, gl finding replacements.)

@@gamerpaddy they are around t he same price these days.

@@user-yk1cw8im4h No Matter where i look its allways 60 bucks and Up for a ts100

@@gamerpaddy I own the TS100 and the pinecil and I can confirm that. I loved my TS100. I love my pinecil even more. However I've had an annoying problem with the pinecil, which I believe is 100% my fault : sometimes when the tip touches a PCB, the iron reboots and stops heating. I am 100% sure that's a grounding issue as when I tried it with my powerbank, it never happened. But somehow it never happened to my TS100 either. Using a powerbank with the pinecil is one of the things that make it so good to me. I know you can get the TS100 working with a battery, but I don't know much about DIY batteries and I don't really feel like messing around that. Meanwhile you can buy a USB C power bank from a shop (as long as it has power delivery) and it'll work well for a really long time. And it's so much cheaper than the TS100 ...

Nice but Tom should give credit if hes going to copy his phrases (We're gonna test that), etc.

@@orbitalair2103 If you watch to the end of the video he does give credit to Project Farm.

JBC is much better in my opinion. I wish JBC was incldued in the review. By the way, hakko is Japanese. He didn't mention it unlike german ones he did. By the way, Pinecil has boost mode. Otherwise, it doesn't go full power. Not sure this review is done with boost mode too.

@@orbitalair2103 credit for using words in a certain order?

JBC is a totally another kind of budget

You can get USB-C to 5.5mm jack cable with a converter to 20V for 10€. This cable is godsend. You can plug the TS100 to any USB-C charging port that supports QC 3.0

I actually swapped from a beefier Stannol soldering station to the TS80P and have zero regrets. It performs at least as well as the Stannol did of not better in my use, feels better in hand and has the silicone cable and the tip is closer to the handle too. The reason I bought it was that I have no dedicated spot to keep a soldering station at and lifting a whole station in and out of storage was annoying as heck. I definitely recommend flashing IronOS on it, it's super easy to do, the iron shows up as a usb drive on your computer and you just copy the firmware file there and you're done. It not only looks nicer but gives couple extra settings and apparently is more stable as well as I have not experienced any of those crashes Thomas talked about in the video. Edit: typo

I bought the ts100 and it's great, but if I were to buy again I'd probably get the ts80. I rarely if ever need the extra power.

So Pine64 also sells a silicone USB-C cable alongside the pinecil and it seems nice so far. Another thing missed on the pinecil is that it can run off of DC barrel jack (laptop charger), or off of USB C pd or qc3

pine64 sells a silicone usb c cable- i’m a huge fan of silicone cables, and it is literally one of only 3 that you can get- the others being the miniware which you can buy only with the ts80 or ts80 power supply, and an “allite” 100w cable, which is nice, but has to be bought either from amazon US or the chinese shopping websites. so the import fees are insane. pine’s is a steal in comparison and i’m buying more the next time i order from there

Can't run a Hakko straight from a tool battery like you can a TS100 style iron. Printed a nice adapter for both my kobalt and DeWalt batteries.

So if you use at least something like 20W, I can tell you it definitely seems to heat up faster than my Hakko.

The FX-888D is not worth buying in my experience. It will get the job done, but it's so slow and loses heat so easily vs the TS100 or Pinecil that even once you have bought everything you need to make a proper station out of one of those portable irons, you are still ahead moneywise, and you can also take the thing with you and run it off a laptop charger, lipo battery, USB power bank, etc if you do fieldwork.

lcd died or the whole iron? I needed an iron to swap mine, the "irony"

@@nicoful86 whole iron, let out the magic smoke, entirelyy fault

My experience with soldering gear is that you very much get what you pay for. I've been using an analog dial controlled Hakko for well over a decade. I love it. I learned on an ancient Weller station that I will some day inherit from my father because it's a Tank.

I had a hakko fx-888 (the analog one) and I miss it. I left it at a job somewhere (not using it for work, but forgot it there until after I'd switched jobs). I very much dislike the interface on the 888D. Changing temperatures around is a royal pain compared to just touching a knob. I love everything else about it though.

Finding Hakko parts just easy in the US i guess. Had trouble to find the iron after seen recommendations.

I've never really seen the Hakko refresh except during initial heat: at least mine appears to display the setpoint instead of the actual temperature as long as it's somewhat close.

I agree. I have a Hakko and I love it. Before that my primary iron was a Weller 35W pencil iron. I bought the Weller about 10 years ago after dealing with cheap Radio Shack firestarter irons my entire life and decided to splurge. The Weller is leaps and bounds beyond the old crummy irons with their anemic heaters and tips that oxidize and rot away after a few projects, but man, it sure takes forever to heat up. Like 5 minutes. Until then, you can't even tin the tip. I bought the Hakko about 5 years ago and it was a game changer. I never had a legit workbench so when I finally built one, I bought a benchtop station. I don't know how I lived without it. Hot tip changes aren't a big deal if you just use some pliers. The only thing to look out for is accidentally changing the calibration offset if you press and hold the wrong button to change the temperature. Judging by the color changes of the tips, I was trying to use it at well over 400C, thinking I was around the usual 185-190C. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why my solder joints weren't 'wetting'. It was because I was vaporizing the flux as soon as the solder touched the tip. I figured it out, reset to defaults, and it's been smooth sailing/soldering since.

I also have the Hakko. It's in my price range and it has been a good performer for several years. Previous experience with Weller was not as good. Hakko meets my price/performance requirements. The Ersa is just too expensive for an occasional hobbyist station.

Mine died on me 😢

The tip setting the temperature is also a benefit for production work where for consistency you want all the assemblers using the same temperature. The shop can enforce that by only providing one temperature type tip. My WESD-51 does that by having a control lockout that is toggled by touching a magnetic tool to the ESD symbol. But the production environment "feature" and reliability means that the Metcals have a production environment price tag...

Yes. Metcal acknowledges 2 patents in the design of that station. 1905 : Induction Heating (Metcal uses RF) 1959-1965 : Weller’s Curie Tips and Magnetic switching.

I believe it was meant for soldering workshops where the employer doesn't trust his employees to use the right temperatures. From my own experience I know that soldering pros tend to use way higher temperatures than recommended and later no-one knows why certain heat sensitive components have such a high failure rate.

Ts-100 is what I ended up using after 2 years of using multiple different devices for surface mount. Electrical engineer here!!

I've used a Weller station forever and was amazed at the TS100

Same here. Always used cheap stations, but the TS-100 is the best investment I've ever made in that regard.

I was pretty surprised not to see the ts100 in the lineup, I have to say.

Having used the impressive Ersa iconpico(propably the best station for the money, except the tip nut breaks now and then), i can easily say my TS100 is the best by far(except the handle, which ersa is better).

Pace, metcal are professional soldering stations that costs over $500

Bought a used Metcal years ago and I've always loved it. Thought I might get a TS-80 for the portability eventually

I have several soldering stations. And the one I go to when I have to do a lot of soldering is the Metcal. It is such a pleasure to use! It is also the only one I have with tweezers. It is not cheap though. My second choice is the XYtronic LF-3000. Strangely enough, as it is one of those Hakko kind-of-clones. For the money it is hard to beat.

@@Haakkon if you just want portability TS100 over TS80 personally

I love my Metcal PS-800.. Still going strong after 15 years.

Bought a used MX-500 on e-bay 10 years ago. Even for present days won't change it even to MX-5000, nor any other brands. Who try Metcal once, won't change it :) Bought a bunch of used and new tips of prefered types for surplus, and seek for prefered models on e-bay once in 3-6 months. In "Service laboratory" use mode MX-500 tips works from 1/2 to 2-3 years, depending of type of needed jobs. P.S. Bakon 950D with 5-10 different T13/T12 cheap chinese tips for portative use is my choice for last 5-6 years :)

Have the KSGER T12 and KSGER hot air station and these are the best value station. Make sure it’s properly grounded and a few more mods you can do your self.

agreed

you can also get similar models that straight up use JBC tips and then blow everything here out of the water.

@@tommihommi1 jbc tips?

@@gst8248 JBC, the company that makes the best "no compromise" soldering stations which the TS80 etc took a little inspiration from.

ah thanks

True and you can swap hot tips in less than 10 seconds without tools.

You get a large chisel tip and crank up the heat to max. My insane iron goes up to 600C in just few seconds. Gotta love the crazy Chinese engineering.

I agree. Having great power capacity like Ersa and Weller is crucial for effective and comfortable soldering, in my opinion.

It breaks my heart hearing of the passing of someone with so much passion, hurts in my soul.

I kinda disliked, that he gave the stations the advantage with the bigger tips, but the USB irons didn't get that advantage for the comparison. Would love to know if you add a bigger tip to the pinecil if you still have problems with the big wire 🤷🏻‍♂️

@@ized88 Think the testing is mainly what you get out of the box.

i have a clone T12 too.... i love it.... is much better than those cheap fixed wattage iron....

I agree. (Not an ad ... my real opinion.) I settled on the Chinese 75W Bakon 950D. The unit sells for around $50-60CND with shipping. It employs 'fast heating', 'easily replaceable' cheap compatible T13 tips (~$5 each.) The operation is very simple, with 5 preset temperatures from 250° to 450°. It is small enough to be portable, takes little bench space, while powerful enough for demanding jobs. The iron is very lightweight with a flexible silicone cord. I recently bought a second unit, just in case the first one fails, but I'll probably never need it, as this has been very dependable. For anyone interested, the 950D is widely available on AliExpress. I suggest: 1. Buy it from a store with a 'good rating.' There is an 'official store' with a 100% rating, which currently sells it for $30+$24shipping (Canadian.) 2. Pay attention to the plug. Most units ship with a non-replaceable European 220V plug. If you need 110V ... make sure to pick this option. 3. Pay attention when buying tips. T13 is not an upgrade over T12 ... it's the same but with a different flange. Make sure you buy '950D compatible' tips.

The Pinecil also works with T12 tips, though you would want to add an extended grip of some sort. I'd recommend it over the FX-951 clones because the FX-951 interface sucks and the Pinecil is just an all-around less sketchy product. That said I would recommend the FX-951 clones (or many other irons that take T12 tips) over any of the proper stations listed in the video because of how much better T12 tips are and how many different ones are available.

Totally agree. For example KSGER ones seem to be well considered in youtube reviews, I was expecting it to be compared, or any T12

Yep, JBC is the best system in the world and blows these away. The tips are quite expensive though and I was hoping I could adapt one of the TS100 tips to work with the driver unit, but it is not possible.

Since you're mentioning JBC... Aixun T3A would be a great budget option for a JBC C245 compatible 200W station. C245-759 as general purpose tip (2.4mm chisel), C245-866 (6.6mm chisel) as just absolute overkill high thermal demand tip. Can even solder to the typical copper tubing used for heater hot water circulation in homes. Shoutout to SDG Electronics while I'm at it, for showcasing that thing. Would love to try a RF station eventually, so Metcal or one of those newer Hakko stations (I think FX-100?). Pinecil/TS100 is great if you happen to have a bunch of 6S liion/lipo batteries to repair rc models out in the field. But soldering XT90 is kind of the limit of what it can do. Possible, but it's noticeably struggling.

@@Rejdukien since the video focused on genuine brands, that would be only be fair to stick to those only. All other clones are worth mentioning in their own video comparison as there are just one too many.

It's the best *performing* station, but the not the best. Just the same way you might prefer a Vauxhall station wagon over a Corvette for daily driving - the Corvette is obviously faster and prettier, but the Vauxhall actually fits your family and groceries for a week.

Came here to say just that. Comparing tiny usb powered integrated tip irons vs big indirect tip stations and they all perform anywhere near similar tells you all you need to know. Integrated/direct power cartridge style iron tips are far superior. And the KSGER T12 is the best bang for buck in that category. Showcasing those indirect tip stations is a waste of your time. There's 0 reason to use them.

@@spencmmWB Well quite. I have no idea why anyone would entertain the idea of buying those old style with the element in the handle. Once you go direct, you would never go back.