Review and teardown of Xytonic LF-3000 Soldering Station - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: mimmus78
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 27, 2014, 06:20:16 am
content: Some months ago I started searching for a good cheap soldering station on internet. I considered many brands like Hakko, Ersa, JBC, etc., they all reputable brands with very good quality products, but any soldering station from those brands seems to cost way more than my 100€ target.After running out of possibility with big brands, I started digging in Asian market and identified two interesting brands: Quick a Xytronic.I contacted a Quick reseller here in Italy, but at the end retail prices where more near to a JBC soldering station than what I was searching so I decided to (temporarily) give up and try with Xytonic.Among the many models Xytronic produce I decided to test the Xytonic LF-3000, it has a heating power of 90W, uses High Frequency technology and you can still find it at 100-110€ circa here in Europe.After unpacking the soldering station, you will soon notice that the whole body is completely made of aluminum. The only part made of plastic is the front panel where the led display and controlling buttons are located. A mechanical on/off switch can be used to cycle on/off the station or to recover from deep sleep.This soldering station has an optional energy saver mode that will automatically lower the temperature tip to 100° C if the station has been idle for more than 20 minutes. The station stays in energy saving mode for other 20 minutes than completely turn off the heater. Anyway if you don’t like energy saving mode you can disable it from the configuration menu. You can also password lock the temperature setting and this is a function requested by production line. Last but not least Xytronic tell us the station is completely ESD safe.In the back of the station you will find the mains power cord an earth jack and the fuse holder. The weight of the station is pretty decent and you certainly feel your money went in some heavy metal tool and not some crappy plastic.The soldering iron stand is made of good quality hard plastic and it feels like very solid and durable. I would be more confident if it was made of steel or aluminum, but I really cannot complaint nothing about it.As you can see from heating curve traced by my fluke 287 multimeter warm up time from ambient temperature to 360° C is just 18 second. This is a pretty decent time and it will give us also an idea of what to expect like temperature recovery during soldering. The station overshoot a little bit (up to 400° C) during first warm-up and it need first two minutes to learn how much power it needs to keep tip at the preset temperature. After this learning time, temperature will be quite stable and it will overshoot just few degree during light soldering works and bit more with heavy soldering joints. Thermal mass of the bigger tips are quite adequate to quickly melt reasonable big joints even by setting the temperature tip at 230° C. I think overall temperature regulation is quite good as also recovery time.Tips assortment includes all fundamentals and you can choose the ones you like from a range of 15 tips. Assortment includes different sizes of flat screwdriver and conical tips as also knife and column cut for drag soldering.Using soldering iron is a pleasure, it’s light and the cord is soft and made of heat-resistant plastic. One of the most common problems with cheap soldering stations is that soldering iron pretty soon became hot and uncomfortable, but this will not be the case. I left iron on for two hours set to a temperature of 360° C and the handle temperature remains at a comfortable temperature of 35~36° C.TEARDOWNIf you read the first part of the review you will already know that the case of the soldering station is completely made of aluminum. To access the internal you just need to unscrew the two screws that keep on the two lateral side of the case. Once gained access to the internal of the soldering station we can see that most of the space is occupied by the transformer. I found Xytronic a little paranoid about the number of shake-proof washer they used, everything is nicely bolted and secured like in airplane wings.You will notice also a lot of cable wiring going everywhere and everything is just nicely crimped and strapped. Mains wires are all inside heat resistant sleeves and grounds wires are all attached with shockproof washer. Every piece of metal body has its own ground path and you will notice a good number of metal parts where the painting was not applied to warranty conductivity. I liked all this design: it will ensure not only grounding safety, but also EMI reduction (don’t forget this station use radio frequency to heat the soldering iron).The main body of the soldering station is made of two parts, the top part contains the controller board, the lower the transformer. By disconnecting some molex connectors you can easily slide out the top part and separate the control panel by the transformer. This give us access to the control board that appears quite simple and 100% through hole technology. This means that apart from the MCU everything can be replaced and repaired. At first sight the PCB seems well-engineered with no afterthought. Overall quality seems very good and surely nothing was left to chance.On the control board we can notice that Xytronic has used an ATmega88PA 8-bit AVR micro-controller. The “radio frequency generator” use a IRFP360 (23A 400V) Power MOSFET, thermally bonded directly to the aluminium soldering station case. All caps are Tocon and rated to 105° C (not the best brand but at least they are rated to the right temperature).The transformer is a 230V 36V 3A unit and considering that the soldering station will not run always at it’s 100% power it should be quite adequate for the work. I run some test with a Kill A Watt like meter and it measured a peak power of 109W when the soldering iron was over a big heat-sink. Idle consumption is 6~7 W with a power factor of 0,86 when heating and more than 0,90 when idle.The soldering iron is quite easy to disassemble and you just need to unscrew the plastic cap near the heating element. After undoing the cap everything slide out of the handle and you can access or replace the heating element (sold apart like spare parts).CONCLUSIONSI’m very satisfied by this soldering station and at a price of only 100€ it can compete quite well with other “low” price stations. Design is quite good, build quality seems to be almost like any top soldering station. Circuit is simple and apart from not having a schematics it seems to me very repairable. It is build like an aircraft and I bet more than a bear that will last for long time.All this 90W power will help you to work faster and comes in really help when working with a multilayer PCB where soldering/desoldering operations can be challenging with a cheaper iron.I think this is a good product for the price and if you cannot effort a 200€ (or more) for a professional soldering station this model can be a valid alternative.As usual you can find some more photos of the station and of the teardown at my site by following this--> LINK.Thanks for reading this review.Domenico

author: mimmus78
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 27, 2014, 07:29:42 pm
content: I added some more image to the original post.

author: mcinque
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 27, 2014, 07:34:47 pm
content: +1

author: Carrington
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2014, 07:55:02 pm
content: Again the OP07C!This thing have a cold-junction compensation?

author: mimmus78
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 28, 2014, 08:01:05 am
content: Nice question!It seems there is not any explicit thermocouple compensation circuit, but anyway I think they can still use temperature sensor inside atmel chip to get some adjustments.I will try to do some more tests to check temperature stability of the station and let you know what I find.

author: mimmus78
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 29, 2014, 11:43:57 pm
content: Well there isn't any temperature compensation at all. Reference junction is positioned at the very end of the soldering iron, as far as possible from the heater. No component is used as temperature sensor there. They assume ambient temperature to be constant (like 20°) and rely that soldering iron (and cold junction) wont heat up too much during operation.I run a 60 minutes test at 360° to check how much the temperature will drift during heating up. During the very first minutes the temperature tip stabilized at 356° C. After 60 minutes of continuous operation, when the handle was supposed to heat up a little bit, the temperature drifted just +3° C from initial measurement.This will probably means that if you use the station at 15°C or at 30°C you will have a temperature tip some degree lower or higher than as it was operating at 20°. Unless you are going to use the station at very extreme temperature I don't think this will be a real problem.

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2014, 04:02:15 pm
content: Xytronic is one of those old venerable brands but it got a mixed reputation after sourcing some of their stations to China decades ago.Where is your station made?I think everything is back to Taiwan now, and the Taiwan made models are very good stations. I would get them in lieu of no names like Aueoye or Yihua.http://www.xytronic.com/corp.htmThe only reason I would not consider them is in the USA is just that models from Xytronic and Hakko that compete on functionality can be near the same price, and a Japanese Hakko wins on that account.

author: mimmus78
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 30, 2014, 10:38:40 pm
content: >> Xytronic is one of those old venerable brands but it got a mixed reputation>> after sourcing some of their stations to China decades ago.>> Where is your station made?Yes it's "made in Taiwan">> I think everything is back to Taiwan now, and the Taiwan made models>> are very good stations. I would get them in lieu of no names like>> Aueoye or Yihua.>> The only reason I would not consider them is in the USA is just that models>> from Xytronic and Hakko that compete on functionality can be near the same price,>> and a Japanese Hakko wins on that account.Well if you are in US just buy one of this FX-888D at 65€ and live happy. But here in Europe no way to get one of this station at this price.Consider this station has 90W of heating power that does not directly compare with the 65W of the Hakko and it uses high frequency heater. In theory LF-3000 should be better than Hakko for temperature recovery.Than if you still need to save some more bucks you can even go with LF-1700 that is very similar to FX-888D (and maybe you can also put Hakko tips on the LF-1700).I think Xytronic is really underestimated here in Europe.

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 31, 2014, 01:38:31 pm
content: Yes, Xytronic has far more options in the low end range between $50-200 to choose from. With the FX888 now being made in Malaysia [ and hearing scattered reports of failure since the model was introduced ] Xytronic is far more competitive, in EU no question. In the USA too, if they are truly made in Taiwan again.Quote from: mimmus78 on May 30, 2014, 10:38:40 pm

author: ozgurtem
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 08, 2017, 11:13:57 am
content: hi .It says on the device "lead free soldering station". What does that mean?Can I do leaded soldering?