The Station - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 30, 2024, 12:27:58 am
content: The station is an open source project.Will include:Multiple adjustable power supplyMultiple fix power supply(All isolated, and all Gan)Multimeter + (ESR Meter depending of the possiblity, at a good price)Hot airSoldering ironDesoldering iron (depending of the possiblity, at a good price)SMD Pump (depending of the possiblity, at a good price).(It's possible to add other fonction if you see fit.)One of the future fonction, it to be able to read and control everything from the PC by USB C (2.0) (can be above 2.0 if needed depending on the speed requirements.)The station requirements: (if you want to help for the project)A schematic of a circuit for the gan circuit with the minimum lost possible (the less heat created is the best.)A schematic of a circuit to read the values of the different power supply (Volte and Amp) everything will be collected by the esp32 S3 and sent to the display.A schematic of a circuit for the multimeter / (ESR Meter) (with the Code open source if possible)A schematic of a circuit of the other part of the project.This project is open source, and is not for profit, the goal is to offer the best products for the best price and having it durable, and reparable.Every one participating in the project will be thanks In the website for the project's (you will be able to include your website)In the first time the product will be available on AliExpress with free shipping (I will use already implanted Shop I will just take a small cut to pay me for the price of the prototyping (the shop will receive a badge certifying they are contributing to the project but especially that the kit is conform to the original design and functions). For the price and the ease of shipping. (Better price for the customer)I a second time I hope to get it available in European Shop will be obviously more expensive but you will get 2 years of warranty and a more rapid shipping.Every function being an option this product is totally modulables, obviously all the fonction can be installed together (the Code will be adapted in fonction of the options you take.)You can a new fonction at any time you just need to update the Code.This product will be available as a kit for the through hole components, but every surface components will be preassembled.The prototyping will be done in Europe, I will try to work with European company as much as possible.Cordialement Irilia.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 05:55:57 pm
content: Combination soldering station/power supply/multimeter gadgets have been out for years, invariably targeted at the very low end market. It might be useful to explore why nobody makes integrated benches for midrange and higher end users. (As well as why even for the low end market, there are very few of these, and I've never even seen one in person once.) Why do people choose separate devices instead? What are reasons to integrate? What are reasons not to?What are competing products? There do exist high-end modular systems, like PXI and AXIe (industry-standard) and NI's CompactDAQ systems. These things are all $$$$. Why is this?(I'm not answering them for you, these are just questions you should think about before deciding how much effort to invest.)

author: Andy Chee
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 08:54:24 pm
content: Quote from: Irilia on August 30, 2024, 12:27:58 amWhat experience do you have in electronics product design? Have you designed anything in the past? Have you constructed/soldered anything in the past?Or are you expecting other people to work for you, and you just do the product marketing/selling?

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2024, 08:26:37 am
content: tooki made some very good points about the marketing side of your concept: How sure are you that this would even be a desirable product? Do the costs pan out? Would users want to be constrained -- for each and every module -- by the functionality your design offers, rather than have a choice to mix and match various products? Would users want one monolithic physical block which comprises all components? (It would not fit onto my little bench and shelves.)Since you seem to have little experience with hardware product design -- have you thought about compliance at all? With the power supply and soldering station parts, you are taking on heavy responsibility for electrical and fire safety. I trust that you are aware that labelling this as a "DIY kit" would not relieve you of the obligation to ensure CE compliance?I get a sinking feeling that the product concept may have taken its name from this...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire

author: inse
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2024, 02:14:17 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on September 04, 2024, 08:26:37 amGood point not to forget about in the excitement of hardware development!Important and €$

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 02:47:01 am
content: Quote from: tooki on September 03, 2024, 05:55:57 pmI don't have decided to go for this project/ product without consideration, it's why it's modular, you take the module you want, not everyone need all the module and it's great.Why the big brand cost so much, margin, additional functionally, more shipping cost, marketing and more. My product is a kit so you pay obviously less, also it's not destined to laboratory test, it's a prosumer product 😉

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 02:55:52 am
content: Quote from: Andy Chee on September 03, 2024, 08:54:24 pmYes I design the things I need in general, yes I do soldering for more than 10 years, can be surprising but I originally designed this project and I was like I can do a kit for everyone that want it, don't have a lot of space on there desks, and so I started to reduce even more the size of the product, reduce the numbers of wire, reducing the weight, avoiding at the maximum the amount of through hole components.

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 03:05:56 am
content: Quote from: ebastler on September 04, 2024, 08:26:37 amThe station (soldering station, Hot air station)Not taken the name from something outside of the EU 😹So I'm not the one selling the product, or supplying the components.CE compliance, is just a certificate with no real values I've learned, because this just the company manufacturing it saying I'm conform, no external validation.

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 03:07:18 am
content: Quote from: inse on September 04, 2024, 02:14:17 pmI know this very well 😉

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 05:52:07 am
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 06, 2024, 03:05:56 amIn your OP you wrote about selling "the product", first via Aliexpress, then also via a European shop. You might get away with selling a non-compliant product direct from China -- in that case the individual customers are the official importers. Maybe some of them get unlucky and have the import seized and destroyed by customs, but that will be unlikely.But no European company, in their right mind, will want to be the importer of record and distributor for a product of this class which is not CE compliant. And they will ask you about documentation to show that the product is actually conforming, looking beyond the formal Declaration of Conformity -- at least actual internal design analysis and testing, maybe a report from an external test house if the product brings higher risks.In either case, just imagine what happens if your power supply or soldering station design actually electrocutes an unlucky user or burns down a house. Do you want to deal with the legal and moral implications? I would very much recommend to take CE compliance seriously. While I can kind of understand amateur projects which take the EMC part lightly, I draw the line at electrical and fire safety.

author: Andy Chee
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 09:19:43 am
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 06, 2024, 02:55:52 amYour english language appears to be incorrect.A project design is not the same as a project idea.You appear to only have an idea, but you have no design.What is your native language?

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 09:29:30 am
content: Quote from: Andy Chee on September 06, 2024, 09:19:43 amFrench probably, based on the "cordialement" and "fonction" in the OP. Not that it matters too much; I don't think language limitations are the main stumbling block here.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 10:20:39 am
content: I don't want to discourage you from your project, sounds cool. I'll just add the old adage: "Jack of all trades, master of none"There is a long history of "Jack of all trades, master of none" designs not being successful in the market because it usually doesn't do any one thing really well.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 10:22:43 am
content: Quote from: tooki on September 03, 2024, 05:55:57 pmSome of these are deliberately targeted at mobile/laptop repair techs. As they generally just want it for one specific need and not as a general purpose bench tool.e.g. this one with an analog current meter because that's more useful to see power on overcurrent faults visually.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2024, 03:09:21 pm
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 06, 2024, 02:47:01 amSo what advantage is there over just buying individual devices?I don’t know if you are familiar with ELV, a German electronics vendor that for many years made some of the nicest kits in the industry. They had a complete line of test gear (including meters of all kinds, power supplies, soldering stations, and all kinds of analog and digital specialty devices) in a nice enclosure that let them all stack nicely. ELV has released its entire magazine archive for free now, and it shows the schematics for most of those kits. (Unfortunately, in the 90s they moved more and more of them to microcontroller-based designs, but since they don’t release source code, those later projects cannot be recreated easily.)Quote from: Irilia on September 06, 2024, 02:47:01 amAnd what makes you think you can do it cheaper than they can?Quote from: Irilia on September 06, 2024, 02:47:01 amOh you sweet summer child…Kits cost way more than finished goods now. Kits were only cheaper back when electronics were used point-to-point wiring which had to be assembled by hand, meaning that assembly labor was a significant cost. But ever since PCBs assembled with automatic component insertion (which has been around since the 50s) became widespread in the 70s, it’s been cheaper to sell the finished product than the kit.PCB-based products like later ones from Heathkit, and the ones from ELV, were cheaper not because of lower labor costs, but because they were simpler products than commercial products on the market.Kits require a HUGE amount of labor to count, wrap, and label parts individually, and then collect those individually wrapped and labeled parts into a complete kit without forgetting any.Another significant cost with kits is user support, because a nontrivial percentage of the kits will end up not working, whether due to user error (like an inadvertently swapped part, or because a user lacks the skills needed), or because a bad part made it to the customer (remember that the process of individually packaging means a higher chance of a part getting damaged with ESD or physical mishandling), or because you made a mistake and put the wrong part in the kit, and more. Those customers will reach out to you for help in fixing the problem, which may require huge amounts of time and effort, and may require you to send new parts.Quote from: Irilia on September 06, 2024, 02:47:01 amOk, fair enough. Like the Heathkit and ELV products I mentioned above.But the low-end market is where the Chinese are already quite strong. The only reason for kits is for people like me who enjoy assembling them even if they cost more than just buying the product would!It’s sad, because I love building kits, but barely any serious electronics kits exist today.

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 05:41:57 am
content: Quote from: Andy Chee on September 06, 2024, 09:19:43 amI actually have designed a prototype for myself, so I did have a design, obviously it was a prototype so the design wasn't fixed (it's not because you don't have the picture it doesn't exist).

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 05:55:23 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on September 06, 2024, 10:20:39 amI have to be clear if a function don't work as expected it will be rework before the product to be commercialized (it's possible that the product never exist, because of the cost for the customer or different other reasons, but it's not a real big problem because the part being modulable the can be used for individual tool still open source)For the test everyone care about, I'm curious about the numbers of product Sold on AliExpress having a real CE not C E certificate 😹 a rumors say if you respected the rules when designing the product, it will be way more secure than a lot of certified products 😉

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 06:02:51 am
content: Quote from: ebastler on September 06, 2024, 05:52:07 amFuse, earth connection, Insulation(I'm not responsible if the user don't have the earth connected in the socket) but otherwise all the input and output are monitored, so any unexpected events will shut down the station completly.

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 06:16:56 am
content: Quote from: tooki on September 06, 2024, 03:09:21 pm90% of the product will be preassembled, only the through hole components will to be soldered, the case to be assembled And the different connectors to be connected. It's destined to be assembled by a beginner. Also you have to remember User error is not covered by the warranty.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 06:29:01 am
content: the pace PRC does this already, its main market was military mobile repair vans or somethingthe biggest problem with modular products is they don't follow advances. you would need to have alot of foresight to make a modular chassis that ages well. The PRC2000 looks great, and it works, but the precision requirements for soldering keep getting better. Suddenly you have 0.1C control, nitrogen purge, RF heaters, solder feeders, hot tweezers, etc..... More often then not, these features simply decrease the skill requirement and might result in dubious quality increases, but even in the 'old' field of soldering, things start to feel old.I can think of like 10 high tech awesome tools for solder and PCB work that probobly won't get made for a century from now... if you like it enough you can always find some improvements.soldering is a constantly evolving field where I am sure more gadgets will get made and become popular to do things.and systems engineering to allow for upgrade is hard, because you end up with scenarios like "THEY MANAGED TO PUT 25 AMPS IN THAT?!?!" when you have room for 10 amps. It turns into mechanical engineering nightmare where your trying to get stuff to fit in a known from.Solder work is certainly somewhat stagnated, but there is always improvements to be made, we just lack vision, or the market is just cornered to hell and you get a ultra non linear cost ceiling where even the richest companies shudder at buying the equipment for anything but required use.Imagine for instance a soldering iron that has a precision, non intrusive flux dispenser on it. like some high end micro machined fluidics shit with aerogel insulation and all that jazz. Like the iron has a little flap on it like those old 70's cars with headlights that hide, so you can drip flux on something before you solder and then solder with a pencil. only 5 grand for a solder tip. And it spits flux while hot on a laser beam targeting sight with a range of 5 cmand you can dream about micro microwave plasma torches and metalization guns so you can just draw a new trace if you want :'( . maybe eventually someone will make a battery powered pen that can deposit a functioning IC on something with little silicon rod inserts lol, gyroscopically stabilized so you can do it free hand

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 06:34:05 am
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 07, 2024, 06:02:51 amIt's not that easy when you spec well above 3 kW of total power, 100 V output, hot air at 500° C.

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 06:47:39 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on September 07, 2024, 06:29:01 amI'm not doing a gadget, so it's made to be durable, every instant Tips work more or less the same, it's not because you see a lot of new product with new design, that it means the technologies is New. But adapting the power supply for example is not too complicated if you consider letting some room when you design it. It's also possible to get some external part in a box below the table for example, but it's more like if I decide to use a big old transformer that I know can have some advantages some time. You can do what ever you want with the circuit and the box its open source.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 09:35:21 am
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 07, 2024, 06:16:56 amWhy even bother with 10%, then? Even as a beginner I hated “kits” where most of the work was already done. Building it is the entire point of a kit, so taking most of it away makes it pointless.Not to mention that I 100% disagree with the mentality of “beginners shouldn’t deal with SMD”. Sure, soldering beginners shouldn’t necessarily be given 0402 resistors and 0.5mm pitch connectors and QFNs. But given that it is now completely impossible to do electronics as a hobby without dealing with SMD components — and the fact that SMD soldering isn’t as scary or difficult as a lot of people seem to think — it’s entirely reasonable to have beginners solder bigger SMD parts.I used to work at a vocational training center. One of the courses offered was assembly, and so we had many first-year electronics apprentices learning to solder for the first time. They did both THT and SMD, first with 1206 and 0805 and SOICs (1.27mm pitch), but due to feedback from the companies who send their apprentices, we then had them do 0603 and 0402 as well as TSSOP (0.65mm pitch) and QFN. Most of the apprentices have no trouble doing them.In fact, it was at the vocational training center that I designed a kit for the assembly course, a Bluetooth speaker. Because its goal is to expose the apprentices to a wide variety of assembly methods, it deliberately uses a bunch of different connector types, IC packages, etc, spread over more boards than actually needed. (In a “real” product, you’d have rationalized it to one or two connector types and put it on one or two boards only.) Normally, an entire class of apprentices builds them at the same time, so we’d lay out all the containers of parts for them to go gather themselves. But a few times, we had to send them the parts for a board as a kit, and that’s when you really see how long it takes to prepare the parts. But moreover, helping the apprentices with the project really shows how much effort it can take to track down a problem.Quote from: Irilia on September 07, 2024, 06:16:56 amI never said it was covered by warranty. (Any mistakes you make are, though!) But user support is expected, and that can be enormously time consuming. Even if the outcome is “sorry, this was user error, you’ll have to buy new parts” you still need to spend the time to make that determination. Sure, if you only have them solder big connectors (which, by the way, can also be challenging in their own ways) you’re excluding a lot of intensive troubleshooting. But it’s not zero.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 09:42:06 am
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 07, 2024, 06:02:51 amIf you are selling a consumer product in the EU, North America, or any other first-world market, it needs to comply with EMC regulations. And in most cases, you have to prove this with actual independent lab certifications. If your device ends up inadvertently causing interference that causes problems, you’ll not only have to recall the products, but you'll also have to pay the bill for the government investigation to locate the interference source. That’s a 5-6 digit number you don’t want to see…Many Kickstarter products that have working prototypes when they start the campaign end up being delayed by years, and one of the most common causes of these delays is EMC failure.

author: inse
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 10:05:02 am
content: @tookiIf one had already the equipment and experience to do full SMD placement and soldering, he would not need The Station anymore.I could hardly imagine someone having the patience to solder 100s of SMD components, needless to mention the effort packaging and labeling those for the kit

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 11:01:23 am
content: Quote from: tooki on September 07, 2024, 09:35:21 amThe goal is not to get a decorative product, it's to get a functional product, a big part of the through hole components is still soldered manually.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 11:07:57 am
content: Quote from: inse on September 07, 2024, 10:05:02 amThen why even sell it as a kit, and not just as a finished, fully-assembled product?As I see it, one either wants a true kit (where you assemble everything) or a finished product. I see very little value and appeal to anything in between.And if itisa kit, then I’d much rather solder 100 SMD resistors than 100 THT ones that require you to bend and trim leads. As I said: SMD isn’t just thefutureof electronics, it is thepresent.THT isn’t going to disappear entirely, but it’s been clear for years that, with the exception of parts needing extra mechanical strength, new parts are going to be overwhelmingly SMD. I don’t believe in having beginners avoid SMD, nor do I believe that the larger SMD stuff is actually any harder. It’s just different. As I said before: one doesn’t need to start the beginner with the tiniest of parts. There’s chunkier SMD stuff, too.(Also: Kit soldering stations are a bit of a problem for beginners anyway, since you need to have a soldering station already in order to build the kit!)

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 11:11:07 am
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 07, 2024, 11:01:23 amHuh? “Decorative”? What the heck are you talking about? I didn’t say anything about aesthetics. And obviously one wants a functional product at the end, who said otherwise?!

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 11:40:46 am
content: I am not sure how much point there is in arguing further. We have presented the relevant caveats to the OP: desirability of an all-in-one product from the user's perspective; compliance requirements; production/sales/support effort. If Irilia wants to continue with the project nevertheless, so be it. If nothing else, it will be a good learning experience in many fields.

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 11:41:02 am
content: Quote from: tooki on September 07, 2024, 11:07:57 amWhat. About using the station to do SMD soldering, you have 2€ SMD kit on AliExpress do you want me to be competitive against that ?.A set with the tools to solder re Kit will be available as an option if you don't already have one.

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 11:42:33 am
content: Quote from: tooki on September 07, 2024, 11:11:07 amDecorative (not functional)

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 11:49:09 am
content: Quote from: ebastler on September 07, 2024, 11:40:46 amYou are definitely right, if I fail, I fail it's not like if I will lose a lot of money, because I will not Invest a lot of it (I will invest some quantity of time, but if you learn something you don't lose your time 😉

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 11:53:05 am
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 07, 2024, 11:42:33 amRepeating your nonsensical choice of word doesn’t make it any clearer than the first time.Who ever said that the end product should not be functional? I sure didn’t. And any normal interpretation of my replies to you (which discuss things like providing support to users whose kits don’t work after assembly) would find that it’s all based around the assumption of a functional device being the end result. With a kit, building it is how you get there. Or you buy it finished. There just isn’t much point in kits where 90% of the work is done for you, because you’re not having the fun and/or learning of building most of it.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 01:32:14 pm
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 07, 2024, 11:49:09 amJust make sure you don't end up losing a lot of money due to liability issues late in the game -- warranty replacements, or worse, damages/legal costs/penalties. It is quite feasible to losemuchmore than the amount you invest upfront in prototypes and production.

author: inse
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 01:33:32 pm
content: N/R

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2024, 10:21:27 pm
content: Quote from: Irilia on September 07, 2024, 06:47:39 amtake a look at the PRC2000, its not a gadget, its a $10000 soldering mainframehttps://paceworldwide.com/prc2000-th-through-hole-miniature-microminiature-electronic-repair-stationIt does it all but its not really 'cutting edge' on all its tools.Their good for aviation and military wiring that has alot of weird medium precision interfaces, shields and has extra big parts for durability. It does enough special stuff that its not gonna go away in utility.But again, if you make high end highly integrated tools, only the government is really interested in that for tactical use. You put that in a van that drives up to a aircraft or tank to do some quick repairs lolAnd linking a soldering iron to literary anything else in the lab means you need a backup iron unless you wanna take some time off, its like the most critical thing there. managers know a complex multi function tool is gonna go down and they want as little down time as possible, so they prefer independent tools. However putting all that crap in a mobile repair van or tactical repair center (tent in desert) is difficult enough that the PRC2000 is a viable product despite its complexity, though I would not be surprised if they glue on the accessories lolhow are you gonna sell some clunker compared to a TR80 USBC soldering pen that I can put in my coffee mug if I am just a generic hobbyist??Study pace product line, they had all sorts of combo machines over the last 30 years. most of them are hard to enigneer and have weird custom parts (graphite vane pump, resistance transformers, etc).Like for hot air stations, right now the "keys" are1) integrate air pump into machine for a "pen" tool, no fan in handle2) very fast warmup and cooldown time3) precision control, remote sensing4) quietbasically all of those are thermodynamic engineering problems, that require physics level approach, nothing can be done for systems enigneering here to improve any of it. The physics end of the tools need improvement, no one cares about the back end, the electronics are already way better then the "physics devices" that do the work.

author: Irilia
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2024, 03:45:54 am
content: I will update this form when I got some progress (or if something really don't go as expected)A rumors say it's important for other people to learn from my experience 😉.