A heavy duty soldering station modified to work with non-heavy-duty tips.

Donated by q3k after he bought a bunch from a Kleinanzeigen seller who imported them from some Romanian factory.

The station warms up fast and also automatically goes to sleep (180 degrees) after a few minutes, then hibernates to be fully off.

The mounted tip/cartridge is fairly universal for anything from SMD work to dealing with fairly large ground planes.

You can switch cartridges 'hot', the iron will detect it has been removed and turn off automatically. There's a tool extractor built into the stand.

Takes JBC C245xxx tips/cartridges, range available here: https://www.jbctools.com/c245-cartridges-for-t245-handpiece-product-19.html

Do not buy cheap knockoffs! The legit ones are worth the price.

Currently available:

• C245774 (chisel tip, 1.2mm wide)

This was a 48V/T470 station by default, but it has been modified to provide 24V instead. This allows for smaller, C245 series cartridges.

If you want to use heavy duty C470/48V tips/cartridges, you can modify the station to be switchable between 24/48V - there's a footprint for a DPDT switch on the custom PCB that has been hacked into to it for voltage conversion.

Open Circuit Error: Seemingly a firmware bug due to the 24V modification. Put away the tool on the stand, wait for the error to clear, pick up again - the error should clear itself. q3k has started reverse engineering the firmware to fix this issue, but the MCU inside the station is a dsPIC, which does not make the effort fun.