Tag: Comparison

Voltlog #243 – TS80 VS KSGER T12 Soldering Iron Comparison

Welcome to a new Voltlog, yet another soldering iron comparison video and today it’s between the TS80 and the KSGER T12 station. Everyone knows the TS80, is quite a popular portable soldering iron, works with USB type C input, it needs a quick charge compatible adapter to reach full power and it’s quite a capable soldering iron. The drawback is the cost of the tips, it uses this proprietary type of tip and the cost is about $20 a piece.

On the other hand we have the KSGER soldering station which I reviewed in Voltlog #232. This station has a built in power supply and uses the well known T12 tips which are widely available on aliexpress, for example you can get KSGER T12 branded tips for about $3 a piece. I think that’s important, because I have 2-3 different tip shapes that I use regularly and maybe another 2 or 3 that I use occasionally for odd jobs. You can’t just rely on a single tip shape and purchasing the same number of tips for the TS80, is not going to be cheap.

Voltlog #215 – Is a genuine Hakko T12 tip much better than fake one?

A while ago in voltlog #186, I compared the TS100 soldering iron to the STM32 T12 based soldering station and the results were pretty interesting to watch, if you haven’t seen that video there will be a link in the video.

As we all know the market is flooded with counterfeit or replacements for hakko products. So I’ve always wondered how does a genuine T12 cartridge tip compare to a replacement or fake hakko tip. So today, we’re going to test a genuine T12 tip vs a replacement one. This is my genuine tip, I got it from an authorised reseller, the cost was $20, shipping excluded. As you might notice it says T15 on the packaging but don’t worry there is no difference between T12 and T15 tips, except they use a different part number depending of the markets. T15 for EU and US markets and T12 for Asia as far as I know.

Voltlog #186 – TS100 VS Generic T12 Station

Welcome to a new voltlog, today we’re talking about the TS100 portable soldering iron, but this won’t be a review because there is no point in making a review video for this mode. There are only a few things you can test with a soldering iron and there are already some very good reviews on youtube from known channels.

I am however interested in how will this iron compare with the stm32 soldering station that I’ve been using for a couple of years. So if you haven’t seen this before, I’ve shown it in detail in voltlog #85, this is a station which I got about 2 years ago, directly from taobao with the help of a friend who lives in China. At that time it wasn’t widely available so it was a bit of a gamble but it payed out because it uses hakko T12 tips and I have a bunch of different models of those and it payed out because the station works great. Nowadays you can find similar models on aliexpress so I will place a link in the description below if you would like to take a look.

I am curious though to see how this would compare with the newly acquired TS100 soldering iron. The TS100 uses a similar type of tip which has the heating element and the thermocouple built in, that type of construction ensures great thermal coupling so the tip can really transfer the heat to the joint and at the same type the sensing element get’s a very accurate reading of the tip temperature and can compensate for that.

Voltlog #148 – Affordable Pocket Multimeter Shootout

In this episode we are going to be taking a look at the affordable pocket multimeter market, I’ve god 4 models which you can get for under $20 and I’m going to review these to see which one is best.

If you just want to skip to the results checkout this spreadsheet on google docs.

Here are links to where you can buy these pocket multimeters:

Here are the pictures from the teardown of these meters:

VolLog #129 – Ebay Bussmann Fuse vs Genuine Bussmann Fuses DMM-B-44/100-R

If you remember Voltlog #117 in that video we analysed some ebay Bussmann fuses to try and figure out if they are fake or real fuses. The ebay fuses we’re way cheaper than anywhere else so that made me suspect they are not genuine.

It’s good to know if the ebay fuses are real or not because they are selling allot of them and people might be relying on these to perform as required when in fact they might be out of spec. For the average bench user which only occasionally goes up to 240VAC it might not be an issue if the fuse is slightly outside the specs but if you are probing some high energy circuit and relying on the ebay fuse to perform according to the datasheet at it is not then something serious might happen, like the multimeter could explode because of a high energy discharge or it could simply damage the meter which is to be avoided.

Links for the products and test equipment shown in this video:

 

Voltlog #123 – Buzzer Comparison

In this video I am measuring the output level of the various buzzer that you can find on ebay, banggood or aliexpress.

 

Get the UNI-T UT353 Sound Meter from these sources:

Here are all the buzzers shown in this video: