ZHONGDGI ZD917 teardown and review - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: hacklordsniper
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2011, 07:52:10 am
content: PART 1The postman just came and bring me one to work. I opened it quickly and allready by outside looks it looks like crap. The plastics have bad edges around the screen, definitely looks like somebody made plastic molding while he was drunk. The soldering gun tools gives a feeling it will fall apart only if you look at it. I'm not going even to plug this in and was tempted to ship it back immediately for a refund but however i will first make a teardown.Complete teardown in about an hour while i return from workhttp://www.china-zhongdi.com/zd-917.htm

author: hacklordsniper
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2011, 10:03:51 am
content: So lets goFirst note, this unit has a name "Blanko" but the unit is genuine relabeled Zhongdi (the proof is on PCB-s and other components which carry Zhongdi logos and writings).I write text by order the images are displayedThe units arrives in a cardboard box protected by thin pieces of foam, i suspect it would stay alive if i ordered one from China directly (I'm happy i didnot since I'm returning this)! I noticed many rattling inside the unit immediately, more on that later.In the box you get ZD-917 unit, soldering gun, cleaning tools for gun, spare filters, different size nozzles for soldering gun, gun stand (which screws on case), soldering pencil stand (surprised how heavy it is, but just as it should be). You will also notice spare pencil iron tips, these dint come standard i ordered them separate.The plastics look like weared out, old and terrible quality. There is moulding cracks everywhere and this is the first thing that turns me down and made me to return it. The operation is simple the red button cuts the power from mains, left yellow turns on the pencil iron the right one the soldering gun heater and internal fan. The soldering gun button turns on the vacuum pump.The back side is simple socket with fuse and fan grill. The fan blows air out, however the unit overheats in operation even with help of it. The fan is only working when the soldering gun is on.The gun has a terrible feeling it will fall apart only when you look at it. Removing the plastic solder container is hard since the plastics do not allign and you literally need to use all your strength to overforce the plastics and remove the tube. The mechanism does not go far enough for tube removal.The pencil iron looks nice, lays in hand good and misses something that better irons have a quality flexing cable. My Hakko FX-888 cable is soft as butter but this cable is probably a simple plain wiring cable. Same thing goes for the soldering gun.As you can see you get the cleaning tools, some spare filters and different nozzles for the soldering gun. The pencil iron tips are not included but bought separately.I decided to open the unit up before i turn it on. I could not remove screws because the secured the nuts with hot glue, so they were just spinning. I had to force the case open little bit, then insert a long screwdriver to hold the nut while i remove the screw.First photo of internals shows where is what. Two transformers (the transformer for the gun heater overheats very much). power boards are on the back and the "brain" is on front. The vacuum pump has an external motor and it does not achieve proper suction for soldering but it is very close. But when this goes one it is LOUD, i suggest ear protection, seriously!Whoever assembled it was trigger happy with hot glue. The unit was hot glued everywhere and even there was some on the heatsinks which become very hot. However this hot glue is not holding anything crap quality connectors simply remove from the board in whole, leaving only the pins on the PCB.I have pictured all pieces of hot glue that fell of the unit and were ratling inside while i got the unit. I really have no comment for that.The used too large diameter washers on the fan screws and then screwed it in probably by some electric tool meant for screwing on construction site and cracked the fan housing on few placesI decided to try the hot gun but it did not work. All time the temperature was 25 Celsius and heater did not work. After reseating all the connectors it came to lifeI tried soldering and i was surprised how good it was. The only thing missing was a little bit stronger suction and heater power. When the air starts circulating the temperature drops rapidly. The solution would be more suction or/and little bit more powerful heater. However it manages to suck good if you heat for longer time and on bigger joints you need to suck twice.After remowing all that components in few minutes (i wonder how did i live without such sucker until now?). The spring loaded non heated thingy is crap and secondly you get small pieces of solder everywhere when you push the spring, here is all sucked in and stopped in filter so there is no fine pices of solder everywhere.After i was done i checked the filter on the unit (there is one in the gun too) and was happy that nothing managed to escape the first filter except few micro particles. There was not much in the gun filter too because the spring looking tube stopped all of it. However i could not remove the solder from spring because it cooled on small hole holding it. I should clean it before i turned down the tool. So i used a torch and gravity did the restAnd there you goo, all solder nicely trapped in little blob (solder recycling anybody ?)Conclusion:I'm returning the unit as it has many build issues with crappy connectors, brittle bad quality plastics on the unit and the gun. The gun transformer overheats and makes bad smell and I'm sure it wont live long. The components in the heatsink achieve amazing temperatures and I'm sure if i had both units on at the same time (gun and pencil) for a hour or so i would have fire on my table.Generally this is a great tool, however quality of this manufacturer is not good. There is a new model ZD987 which has better quality and solved problems and is it true? I do not know, i ordered one all the way from Lithuania and will share my findings with the communityHope you like me review. Ask whatever you wish especially i will return the unit so i can dig deeperEDIT: I have remebered i have a analog vacuum gauge somwhere and found it. The stated pressure of the unit is "VACUUM PRESSURE - 600mm Hg" and my meter shows it is 350 mm Hg

author: hacklordsniper
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2011, 10:05:27 am
content: .

author: hacklordsniper
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2011, 10:07:07 am
content: .

author: ciccio
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2011, 05:03:03 pm
content: A supplier of mine bought the same unit and returned it because of insufficient suction.The dealer exchanged it with another one, of very similar design but with metal case, and that works (at least for single sided boards). Don't know who makes this, but the gun is the same, and it's crappy...The manufacturer is the same that makes a soldering station that I've reviewed in a previous posthttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=4297.msg56879#msg56879

author: hacklordsniper
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2011, 05:36:33 pm
content: My ZD985 desoldering gun for pairing with Hakko FX888 and ZD987 station for a second bench is in post transit. If they managed to improve this new models from some flaws i will work to make this stations better.Replacing the motor with brushless for less noise and better suction (increasing RPM and power of motor), add better cooling fan, bigger heatsinks... but at this moment I dont know what will be inside...We will see when they come

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 01, 2011, 08:28:19 pm
content: Thanks for the good review and photos. These units are not for sale in the USA, but I see at Farnell it cost about £140.08. I guess I'd tolerate this unit and try to bring it up to snuff if this was 'cost' effective for what it does. In the US the Hakko 808 desoldering gun, while big, is well made, reputable and $170.

author: hacklordsniper
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2011, 04:01:03 am
content: I have noticed the Hakko from your post but i dont like its size. The zd 917 was bought locally and this is why i refused to make it good, it was too expensive. For the money i got back i bought both ZD985 and Zd987 from abroad and decided to fix their flaws which are still unknown

author: OZ1LQB
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2011, 01:28:54 pm
content: Hi There..First sorry for my spelling errors i don't speak English offten..I have the older ZD915 and i am pretty happy with it.i do a lot of desoldering from scrap boards to get cheap parts.the zd915 i have do desoldering double sided PCB fine.but i do know its not a hakko or pace ..the handle is not the best but OK..BUT do not forget to get some spare tips and do not forget thatthe heating element only have a average lifetime of 500Hours(confirmed by the factory)All the best from denmarkOZ1LQB / Claus

author: img
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2011, 01:54:19 pm
content: Unless all you need to work on is 2-sided boards, I wouldn't bother with this unit.My suggestion would be an older desoldering station from Pace, their stuff works well on multilayer boards, and they come up regularly on eBay. Don't fall for 'new technology vs old technology' drivel; if you want an optimum of quality, intercompatibility, availability and price, I'd suggest Pace.

author: howarddavidp
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 09, 2015, 03:41:40 pm
content: Hello,I am new, I registered to comment on my new ZD-917. Sorry to Necro the thread, but I just bought mine Friday 11/06/2015.I was able to buy one locally for $139 out the door. Since I bought it locally, I was able to test drive it for 30 mins before I bought it (shout out to Victor of Suburban-electronics in Suitland, MD, DC area). During my test drive, Victor gave me a board to desolder components from, and I can say it did this well in the shop. At home, I was able to cleanup some pots I had that were previously used on other projects, and I can say the desolderer sucked up all the solder on those pots, even the eyelets, cleaned them up 100%. Some of the pots had solder over the stamp on the bottom, which the desoldered removed everything so I could label the specs of the pots (some were A500k, some B250k, etc.). I tried before to heat and wipe the solder off, and it wasn't good enough to read the label. However, this gun worked perfect, removed everything and I was able to read the numbers. I also cleaned up some wires and other connectors, and again, it was perfect. I understand this is a home/hobby unit, and is not meant to be run 24x7, or even 8x5. After about 45 mins, the handle was warm, still completely 100% usable, but I could tell it was heated up, thought I had the setting maxed out at 480 C, so maybe lower temps this does not happen. I used it another hour or so, it never got so hot that it was unusable, just warm. If it keeps going, I would say this is an excellent setup for the $139 I paid.So, for the home/hobby person, this is a great tool, and I would say it performs as expected, maybe even better. I have seen just a de-solder gun go for more than $139 alone, and this came with a OK-Good solder gun included. I will say, the plastic guns looked cheap, and most likely are, but the replacement desolder gun is $24, solder gun is $15. . From the tear-down, I am not surprised at the quality. I saw all metal units like this sell for over $400 online, and Victor even has another unit for $300ish which was meant to run all day, 5 days a week. He made mention, and said if I wished to buy something for a professional environment, this was not the unit. However, for a weekend warrior, a few hours at a clip, this is perfect. I do not solder typically for more than 2-3 hours at a clip, if even that long. I think this unit could handle an 8 hour day of soldering, but I would not want to push it for a 40 hour work week, weekends are all I ever need it for anyway. We have the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, and if it makes it through that, I would say it is a great hobbyist station. Remember the price, and what you get.I am a real person, on gmail and facebook, I do not work for this Chinese company, and nobody paid me to say any of this. Low price, low quality, but acceptable is my final thought on this product.David

author: howarddavidp
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 10, 2015, 04:07:38 pm
content: Hello gain,I am doing research about ZhongDi, and I contacted them. They replied right away (good sign), and my local electronics dealer buys from them twice a year (they have a stated minimum order of 50 units).IT looks like for desoldering Irons with suctions, these are their models:88-552A - 80w - 24v - 6 pin connector88-552B - 80w - 24v - 7 pin connector (extra pin might be for sleep function?)88-5531 - 90w - 24v - 6 pin connector, also called 553 model on some sitesI am trying to find out of the 553 will work with my ZD-917, maybe it is a better unit than the 552A that came with my station? I used it for an hour last night, no issues, and like before, it licked all the solder clean from everything I had to rework. I understand that it will fail at some point (supposedly with 6 months), so I will report back when this happens, and what I had to do to fix it.They also have a US based website now:http://www.china-zhongdi.com/Here is the contact info I recieved:Manufacturer: Ningbo Zhongdi Electronic Tools Co. LtdAddress of sales dept: Room No.2403, 24/F Huijin Mansion, 77 He Yi RD. Ningbo, China, 315010Export Agent: Ningbo Xinkerui/CEIEC·Tel . +86 574 87291690 87293119·Fax : +86 574 87325413·E-mail : zhongdi@zhongdi-solder.netgaven@cnool.net·Skype:zhongdi-nb·Website:www.china-zhongdi.comDavid