Pro'sKit SS-331 Desolder Station Review

no pins fold it over Oh came right out huh honey folks thought we'd take a close-up look at something Santa slid down the stovepipe last week and that is a desaad ring station this is the pros kit model number SS 331 it also goes by the Zed D model number eight nine one five if you're familiar with Zed D D soldering station Dave Jones made them rather popular in a video he did a number of years back when he reviewed the zd9 85 all these Chinese D soldering stations are very similar they've got an LCD display and they've got three buttons a temperature up a temperature down and a button to change between Celsius and Fahrenheit and it's that simple I have been using for the last 40 years of my life well not that long let's say 30 you know solder wick and one of these cheap pieces of crap and it works okay on single layer boards but once you get into dual layer boards you know it's it's almost impossible especially if you can't get at the pins on the other side you know you could cut a component to remove the pin and use the solder wick on both sides to clean out the hole but when you've got you know if you'll layer board that's with a plated hole that's right through and you can't get to both sides such as when you replace relays and you know that seems to be what goes so off and now our relays and capacitors you know 75% of what I repair is because of a bad relay or a bad cap let's get into this thing I'll actually link to Dave Jones's original video on the 98 5 and ever since I saw that one I've been wanting one of these things and I chose this pros kit one for one reason only and that is because I had some bang good points to use up roughly $60 worth and yes I did buy this I didn't have I didn't get it sent to me for free so yeah I got it for around $60 so yeah these are around 130 bucks there is an issue though however but I'll get to that a little bit later but really I could have picked any of these three button Chinese D soldering stations they're all very similar so let's just see what we get in the box here so this is the actual unit itself that houses the electronics and the vacuum pump and the power supply so it's got a 7 pin GX aviation connector or that's the suction input the HOS screws on there and there's a filter we'll talk about those two in a bit and it is fairly heavy and it is fairly big so yeah it's gonna use up a little bit of bench real estate unfortunately here so power cord it's a nice power cord it's really flexible though but check this out and this is the problem with these things here in Canada anyway very difficult to find a hundred and ten volt versions of these I was looking at the zd9 one five on Amazon there's a seller there not to much to bring it into Canada about $40 and shipping and import fees and everything most of the places you know you're gonna spend a hundred dollars just in shipping and just makes it cost prohibitive so that's a problem and even on eBay it just seems every everyone's stalking just the 220 volt versions and not the 110 volt version so we can look at the box here if you can if you need 110 volt it's the 331 II this is a 331 H which is the 220 now I'm gonna get by that problem by using you know one of these European voltage adaptor so it's gonna up the voltage it's just a step-up transformer and it ups the voltage from you know 110 well 120 here and it will be upping it to 240 so that's how I'm gonna be powering it through this and these are rated at 140 watts maximum so I figured if you go double you're probably pretty safe power cords got a standard c-13 end on it I've just got my soldering iron heated up to here to 340 yeah she's hot doesn't melt the wire though so this is obviously a high temperature wire anyway it's good quality cord is what I'm getting at so there's our c-13 input there's the power switch and this is fused and open this up real quick let's take a peek so there's our little fuse in there just a glass fuse 3.15 apps and you've also got a spare one if that one ever blew on ya so that's kind of cool now this is all plastic it's that's not bad but yeah I would have been nicer to probably see a metal house one but really I guess that's not too bad what I don't like about this pros kit version over the zd9 one five or nine eight five is the membrane buttons I hate these damn things they always end up cracking if you use them a lot now hopefully you'd have this set at one temperature and you wouldn't be dialing it up and down that often now let's take a look at the actual gun itself actually let's just look at the stand it's heavy heavy cast aluminum comes with a little spongy and then here's our stands for the actual iron it's just a standard iron stand it's got the little c-clip that you can move back and forth depending on the length of your iron tips and that's very sturdy nothing wrong with that what I did like about this over the other ones is you've got a separate stand it's a lot of them the stands are built right onto the side of the station so this way you can have the station off on the side of the you know back your workbench wherever and you know you can have your desoldering gun you know right in your working zone so I like I really like that let's get to the gun and these are all modeled and off the hakko 472 they're nice they're small they're easy to get into the board with this specific one sometimes they've got the release on the back but these pros kits and the Zed deena eight nine one five they've got this little trigger switch and it just this is a sprung loaded back on it just pull it back slide the glass tube back lift it out and that's how you lift of your glass tube to clean it the little spring in here is just to keep this little aluminum plate held in the back and the idea is when you pull the trigger and you create vacuum pulls the solder through the heating element and it will blast into here and blast against the metal this little aluminum plate at the back and solidify and that's what catches it all and then you've got a little ceramic fake filter and these are the consumable items on these things the biggest one it comes with spares as well as different size tips and you can also get ceramic mat then you can cut your own out so go wild if you want to do that if you wanted to save even more money and the other neat thing about these is you can buy parts for them you can get the guns you can get the heating elements so very serviceable all these gaskets by the way are silicone so they're high temperature silicone but this little gasket here it often moves and will plug the hole and then you won't get any sexual suction so you just have to make sure that that is over the little protrusion the tube protrusion that's coming out from the heating element so when you put your tube back in you do get suction and these things get really polarized reviews people either seem to love them or hate them and when you read the reviews a lot of the problem or people aren't reading the instructions they were upset because the tip is plugged well this is a soldering tip and it's tinned so yeah it's plugged with solder first time you use it you warm it up heat it up hit the trigger it'll pull that slaughter away and clear out the tube and there is you know there's a learning curve to these things it's just like soldering desoldering is no different there is technique to it and I'm gonna try a few we'll see how it goes but you know again it's something that the more you use it the better you're gonna get at it and really soft too there's your actual suction hose silicone hose and silicone sheath wire nice and flexible what we got here so these little rods you can see there they are rasped at the end file like and this is just a clean slaughter out of the two and that is one thing you know these tubes if you don't if you turn the iron off and you haven't cleaned the tube out they will get plugged and you know you're gonna have to reheat the thing up let the solder soften it shouldn't stick though it's all stainless but if there's a glob of solder in there and you let it cool down yeah it's gonna solidify it'll be blocked and that seems to be one of the biggest and the complaints you see on reviews people having blocked tubes again they're just not maintaining them properly you're using them properly for constructions so it's uh just clicking looking over it they're you know they're decent instructions here's all the specs the iron or the heating element is rated at 90 watts so it's powerful your temperature range is 160 to 480 Celsius vacuum pressure is up to 600 millimeters of mercury and then the sleep mode is if you leave it for 10 minutes just got a motion switch in it yeah it doesn't detect any motion it wraps down the temperature after 10 minutes doesn't shut it off this wraps the temperature down to 200 and shows you what the pin notes are shows you how to test them which is cool so you can test your heating element test the switch test the temperature sensor like test the motion switch as well or the wake up switch shows you how to replace a heating element if you ever had to so pretty thorough let's start opening this thing up to vote and open this just comes off - so think it's it's not bad yeah it's a little plasticky and cheap feeling but you know this is kind of hokey but it's it's fiber reinforced plastic it's not complete junk so there's the internals everything's heat shrunk decent little micro switch or the trigger there's the vacuum hose and then the motion switch probably on the yellow wire there to hear it but no no not bad at all and the other thing I wanted to check out is the end of the plug here a a lot of times these are not put together well there there's a short potential the soldering job is horrible so let's just take a quick look at this not interesting so let's have a look at these connections not bad at all it looks like someone actually knew what they were doing this is the ground wire it's not a shielded cable they're just running the ground wire through and then they've got this lead that is pinching against the clamp pin of the connector oh and that's another thing is this actually ESD grounded back together I don't see if this is grounded so that is let's hook it up to the station and see if the plug is grounded so that's the ground pin so there we go so ESD protected oh another thing power switch at the back that's another thing that bugs me with benchtop anything why put the power switch on the back it's just a pain in the ass power switch should be on the front might be a mod to do time to get into this thing now they make this kinda sneaky to get apart so you've got four screws on the bottom and then there's four hidden screws behind these plastic covers and these snap off but you got to get in there with a screwdriver to snap them out took a little bit of figuring out note different sized screws from the bottom one so make sure you keep the note of that the big ones going the bottom smaller ones go in the front we'll be careful here what we're doing yet okay so there is a vacuum hose can move you can see that but it's uh you just used a zip tie to tie it off on the outlet nipple so we're just gonna have to pry that back gingerly like come off there's a fan at the back unplug that zip tie it in these what's going on here so let me just move this up so there's the little brushless fan at the back as you can see there's our power switch so if you did want to move it to the front there Eve you'd have to put it and bring it through one of these panels because there is there is room oh you could probably put it here might go there or you could put it on the side of course you could use a smaller toggle switch or something but if you wanted to mod it to put your power switch on the front the main component in here is of course the pump I want to zoom in too much or you won't be able to see anything but looks like an rs5 50 motor probably just a DC motor there's the intake for the pump here must be a tooth to diaphragm pump nicely isolated there's a big rubber isolation mount on the bottom one on the top here big grommet around it there's all our control interface we've got a switch board and the actual logic board for the display as well and really nice to see all the GX solder connections here they've all been heat shrunk so they're all nicely insulated all the wire management is tied off yeah it looks pretty good the as far as grounding goes there's our grounding wire in from our c-13 connector here's our power supply so it is grounded switch mode power supply and then a ground other ground strap going to the housing of the GX connector the fan placement it would be turning this way so it's drawing as most fans there drawing air out of the cabinet there's no ventilation slots anywhere on the front there sides or bottom so that kind of seems odd where is it where is it drawing it's ventilation through it's pulling it out the back where is it drawing it from we'll have to see how warm it runs maybe they just don't run warm but to me if you've got an exhaust out the back you'd want an intake maybe over here on this side so you're pulling air past the power the switch mode power supply before powering it on just thought we talked filters so the little ones that go in the gun the ones that you're going to be replacing the most often they are size wise 17 millimeters in diameter and they are three millimeters thick and the big filters if you have to get those looks like about 21 millimeters and they're what fit in here now these aren't gonna get dirty that often these will get dirty mostly from smoke fumes or flux fumes because no solder is gonna be getting by that gun filter is our display so it shows this temperature of the actual tip it's climbing the set temperature we've got it set at 3:30 so as you see these take a while to warm up again you're not just heating a little solder tip up you're heating that entire tube length up right from the tip right to the the inlet into the glass cumulation tube so it takes a while to warm up but there we're up to 3:30 but I would allow it even more time just let that thing heat up for a good minute or two before you start using it let's to see how much vacuum this thing is going to create so they're saying up to 600 millimeters of mercury so that's right down in the gray there that's impressive about 650 now I assume it's probably gonna be a little less at the gun and be try that again she's getting to 550 for sure not bad at the tip pretty impressive now the other thing I thought was just check the tip temperature see how accurate it is so I've just got the thermocouple probe here on the multimeter just insert it in the tip hole and the station's saying one sixty and this is coming up so it's been about 30 seconds and yeah it's slowing right down so one sixty here meters showing one sixty-two I can certainly live with that let's dial it up to 360 let's go up to 380 that's the temperature I'm gonna work out as fast forward yeah it's been about a minute and it's coming up it's overshooting a bit and then it drops but it's very at fairly accurate you know for a desolder tool ten degrees over what's indicated here not bad at all so I'm just gonna leave the stock 1.2 on and we've got an ECM Control Board I'm gonna take attempt to take this icy out I'm just gonna put some flux on here now important very important that the tip goes right square over the hole the whole idea is you want to be pulling vacuum through the hole from underneath the hole if you come in at an angle you're not gonna get vacuum on the backside of the hole so you want to be square over the hole the molten solder is actually creating a seal around the tip of the gun we'll try one here no because it's a through-hole and it's plated all the way through I may have to hold the tip on a little bit longer but is that focusing focusing you bastard seems to be doing a good job there's different techniques I've seen people just hold it over hold the vacuum switch on after you come off so any solder in there will get pulled all the way through and then others say to shake this around a lot one didn't work in Edale definitely having flux on there helps I found if you don't leave it on long enough when you first put it on and you try to suck right away it won't work because the slaughter hasn't melted all the way to the mall so I don't know if you'd have to wiggle it I'm vining him I just hold it over the hole for a long enough period of time that the solder will melt all the way through the hole to the other side of the cord it's gonna take yeah I think that should do it there we go yeah there's potting compound on there that's what was holding her in but yeah for a first attempt not completely horrible right let's try a cap here doesn't help when the pins going over oh that works sweet just helps it flow better right so it makes sense that if the solder is flowing better it's gonna be able to suck it up better to know let's pins fold it over Oh came right out huh yeah you got to hold it on let the heat migrate through the hole before you pull vacuum otherwise you're only gonna have no problem so I'm impressed let's see now there's all the crap in there let's take that out and pull this back all the way pull your glass to back lift it out at the front and holy smokes put a bit of gunk on there so yeah you can just clean that up there's our little filter so nothing really got on the filter at all that that blast plate if you want to call it that kept most of the solder off the plate you're off the filter pretty cool finish off here just a couple of things tip replacement in case you're curious very simple you just unscrew this it's like an old M style soldering tip replacement not quite the same tips obviously they focus on this little guy so main thing is that before you turn it off you you pull vacuum through it so there's nothing stuck in there and you can see right through the tube I've done quite a bit now I've been playing with this for nothing for about another hour and yeah nothing's getting stuck in that tube at all you've got one one point two and one point five and like anything it's gonna take practice I certainly didn't learn to solder in an hour and I haven't learned to desolder in an hour but it's going pretty good you know I just have to figure out what tip size is to use basically I think you want it just big enough to fit over the pin but not too big the more vacuum you can pull through the hole the better and playing with temperatures I found if I went up to 400 Celsius didn't have to hold the tip on to the component is long to pull it through so again it's just experimentation and learning learning to use the tool other neat thing is when you have a set temperature if you turn the station off when you turn it back on it memorizes that last temperature that you had it set up so if you're always working at a specific temperature chances are you're not gonna have to use these membrane buttons much this thing's got this blue white and I thought it was a gauge to say when the vacuum was getting low you know full bar would indicate full vacuum but as you see it doesn't change a thing so I think it's just marketing eye candy you know is this an industrial tool no it's not you know I think if you were to use this every day at a shop yeah it's not gonna last that long but for a hobbyist you know I'm gonna be using this several times a month I expect it's gonna last me the rest of my life and by all means if anyone's got this exact model or any of the ZD models if you want to give us your opinions if you had them for a few years how they're holding up for you as far as cons go on this specific pro's kit SS three three one biggest one of course is lack of 110 volt versions that's absolutely ridiculous that they don't have more and I just you can't find them I don't know what the problem is if it's a problem with the manufacturing the distributing but to me they could sell a lot more if they offered 110 volt versions I should mention that switch mode power supply you cannot switch it that's what I thought at first - oh you could go into the switch mode power supply there'd be a little switch because a lot of switch mode power supplies are universal voltages not so with this one it's specific so if you get a 220 volt version and you're on 110 you're gonna have to get a step-up transformer for it the other thing is I hate the membranes I like the rubberized buttons that were on the original zd9 one five and nine eight five a lot better of course the high go or 72d it had membrane buttons and last up is the lack of the power switch on the front bench top any bench top equipment should have a power switch on the front not on the back pros obviously the the performance for the price you know even at a hundred and thirty dollars you know these things used to you know the hakko and similar stations five hundred and up so for one hundred and thirty bucks and like I said I got this for even less just outstanding value and it works it works well good vacuum from saw it it's actually over six hundred we're down to about five fifty at the tip but hey that's very decent and the gun is really nice I like this gun better than some of the others it's really nice to hold lightweight it's nicely balanced and I do like the stand being separate of course I could tuck this in the corner of my workbench and they'll be able to get to the other side of the workbench the cable in case anyone's run wondering is a meter long so you've got a meter of length to work with and again I'll have links below in the description with for this one and maybe some of the others ad DS if you want to check some of them out and yeah if you're at all curious about these things hopefully this little video gave you a few more ideas on it cheers folks happy desoldering

Channel: John Salt

Views: 61,307

Rating: 4.8889918 out of 5

Keywords: desolder station, desoldering station, de solder station, electric desolder tool, electric desolder pump, pro'skit desolder station, proskit desoldering station, pro's kit ss331, ss-331 desolder station, zd-8915, zd-8915 desolder station, desolder station review, vacuum desolder station, pro'skit desolder pump, pro'skit desoldering gun, desoldering gun, desoldering station zd-985, desoldering gun vacuum suction type, desoldering station vacuum pump, desoldering station vacuum

Id: PuiiZO8Ye70

Length: 30min 11sec (1811 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 01 2020