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Review by Tim Blythman Weller T0053298599 Soldering Station Any serious electronics enthusiast needs a proper temperature-controlled soldering iron; ideally, one with interchangeable tips, to suit working with different sizes and types of components. We were given the chance to try out the Weller T0053298599 Soldering Station (previously known as the WE1010). W e probably all started with a simple iron that plugs directly into a wall socket. But once you get good at soldering, you’re much better off with a station that offers temperature control and less resistance to movement, with a supple cable connecting to the pencil. We do a lot of soldering at Silicon Chip; probably more than most people. But likely not as much as anyone working in a production environment. The Weller T0053298599 is pitched at ‘prosumer’, trade and professional users, so it is designed to be used for long periods on a regular basis. Therefore, it should have no trouble handling our sort of usage. base from sliding around. The underside vents are complemented by another set at the rear, providing simple convective cooling. The pencil The supplied WEP70 pencil has a 7-pin plug to suit the power unit and an approximately 120cm-long lead. The lead is coated in heat-resistant silicone and feels light and unobtrusive. The included tip is a 1.6mm ETA ‘screwdriver’ tip (like a cut-off chisel tip), with other ET types being compatible with the iron. The pencil is slim too, and has a textured foam grip. There are various types of tips optional to this tool that you can purchase, including conical, chisel, bevel and knife tips in various sizes. We reckon that it’s helpful to purchase a few different tips when you get a station like this, as they are useful in different situations. Sometimes you need a long, narrow tip to reach a part on a packed board. Other times you need a big tip to solder heavy leads or large components. Tips with flat edges Power station The power unit, labelled WE1, is what we know as a soldering station base. It has an IEC mains receptacle at the rear and a 7-pin socket at the front, accompanied by an LCD screen. There are three control buttons on the right side of the screen, and a mains on/off rocker switch on the left. The station is marketed as a 70W device. It is weighty and contains a transformer, just visible through the vents. Four rubber feet prevent the 84 Silicon Chip The Weller soldering station includes a 1.6mm ‘screwdriver’ tip. Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au The T0053298599 is well-suited for heavy-duty usage. It is solid and includes a settings lock feature to prevent tampering in production environments. can be beneficial when working with solder wick. So having a good variety of tips available at reasonable prices (around $8 each) is definitely a plus in our books. Safety rest Included with the station is a PH70 safety rest, which is also equipped with rubber feet. Like the power unit, the safety rest feels weighty and is not likely to slide around. The rest has a generous space for the included sponge and several holes to store spare tips. Controls The three buttons form a simple and intuitive interface. The menu button cycles between standby time, offset, units and lock, with the up and down buttons changing the selected value. The lock feature is intended for a production environment, to prevent operators from adjusting the settings, although you might also find it useful to avoid accidental changes. The manual is quite thick, but mostly from including almost 30 languages. There are detailed pictograms, so even if there weren’t any words, the unit would be easy to use. Hands-on testing The manual states that the iron can heat from 50°C to 350°C in 28 seconds. We timed it at 50 seconds from ambient (around 20°C) to 380°C; perhaps this varies depending on the type of tip fitted. The nominal operating range is 100°C to 450°C with a stability of ±6°C. That’s a reasonably wide range, and if you need to work with a range of low-melt solders, for example, in constructing white-metal models, then the Weller T0053298599 should have the range and accuracy to do so. We had no trouble using the iron with a typical 99.3% tin/0.7% copper lead-free solder, which has a much higher melting point than standard tin/lead solder. Even working along rows of closely spaced pins, the iron was able to keep up the heat. Having said that, our work typically doesn’t involve really heavy-duty soldering. But based on our experience, we think that it would handle larger jobs reasonably well, as long as you used a suitable tip. We found that the default standby timeout of two-minutes was a little short, but it can be increased to 99 minutes, which we think should be sufficient for most cases. Conclusion We would certainly have no complaints about using this station for our everyday soldering tasks. It is sturdy, adjustable and responsive, and would be well suited to duties much more intensive than we could throw at it. The Weller T0053298599 kit is available at Bunnings Warehouse for $249, including GST. This unit was provided for review by Weller Tools. Visit www.bunnings.com.au/ weller-70w-240v-soldering-station_ p0248144 to purchase the station and/ or spare parts, including tips. Here’s a short link to the above: siliconchip. SC com.au/link/ab8n Suite 201, Level 2, 184 Bourke Road Alexandria NSW 2015 www.weller-tools.com.au/ Arcade Pong: the ANT terminal (continued from page 46) You might be wondering about the purpose of the "ANT" terminal on the PCB. It's close to the VID terminal, so you might think it's meant to drive a TV set's antenna input. But that is not its purpose. In the arcade machine, the ANT terminal was connected to a wire about a meter long, leading nowhere in the arcade cabinet. It connects to the base of the transistor that resets the game, which is floating, except for the tiny leakage of a diode. So the base voltage can float to be just on the verge of causing the transistor to conduct. siliconchip.com.au Back in the 1970s, it was surprising how resourceful teenagers were at trying to get free credits on arcade games. One trick was to deliver an electrostatic charge, or burst of RF, into the machine to clock up credits, as though multiple coins had been put in the coin mechanism. It was possible to prevent this with extensive RF filtering on all the logic circuits and wires leading to coin mechanism, switches etc. In Pong, however, one coin gave one game play credit. Atari decided to simply detect any electrostatic or RF burst, using Australia’s electronics magazine that antenna wire, and reset the game, making it impossible to get a free credit. That is one reason why the original transistors used (2N3643 and 2N3644) in the game's reset circuit were RF types. I left the "ANT" connection on my design so that my PCB could be used to replace/ repair a genuine arcade game console. It is surprising how few people can fix the original boards and run around in circles until they have replaced nearly every IC. The originals were not socketed, and many original arcade machine PCBs have been destroyed by botched repair jobs. SC June 2021  85