Quicko KSGER Hakko T12 Clone Soldering Station by LCSteve

Last crawled date: 2 years, 11 months ago

I decided to remix my own design and make it cleaner and more convenient for me by integrating a battery adapter to use the DeWalt 20V ecosystem since I have a bunch of them. This way I've got portability when I need it. One of the things I wanted to do was to move to a more simple 2(3) part setup to make it look cleaner and easier to print. I made the overall box into 2 parts, the front/back/top and right side are all now one piece and are meant to be printed turned 90 on the side with the open left side facing up. The other piece houses the bottom and left side and join securely to the other half with 4 screws (3mm x 10mm countersunk). This design uses the same 120V to 24V DC converter inside and C14 power connection.
The DeWalt adapter on top was remixed from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2723049 which for some reason it won't let me add to the listing yet but I'll keep trying. If you only wanted to power the soldering iron with the DeWalt battery there is no reason why it also would not work just like that. Now if you decide to make one like this and use both the mains and battery setup you have two options and these are important at least one method is followed. Depending on how you setup the wiring there is a definite worry the battery will backfeed the convertor and most of them especially the cheap Chinese ones like mine don't like that one bit and will let out the magic smoke they need to run.
1st, how I did it. The power going into the soldering iron is split prior to entering and is fed by 2 separate sources. Between those 2 sources I have 5401 Schottky diodes preventing each of the units backfeeding each other. With most any diode there is give and trade in the form of forward voltage drop and heat. The heat here isn't concerning due to the draw the solder controller draws but it loses about 1.5V. They also share a ground at the controller.
2nd, the toggle on the back of the unit I used is to control the mains line coming in to the convertor it effectively shuts off power to the unit. Its a simple SPST on off switch. You can replace this with a SPDT on/off/on rocket. Without adding attritional switches would have the convertor powered anytime the mains are plugged in. The power output from the convertor would wire into one leg of the SPDT switch and the power output from the battery would connect to the other switched leg of the switch and the center would go to the power wire on the controller. This essentially becomes a make/break/make toggle connection preventing the sources from back feeding each other.
I wanted put this up available to others as it is since it's in service for me now and works but I have plans I'll be working on shortly trying to incorporate some versatility. Additions such as a holder for the iron and spool holder for examples. So keep an eye if that's of interest to you.
Parts or similar parts used:
AC/DC Convertor: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XNK1LQ3/
Solder station: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000239660564.html?spm=a2g0s.12269583.0.0.76ae497ejefUaj
IEC320 C14 Plugs: https://www.amazon.com/B06XV831F3/
Diodes: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B083J1QQHR/
Toggle Switch: https://www.amazon.com/B01M2Z70IC/