TS100 Soldering Iron USB Type C PD Adapter by to0kan

Last crawled date: 3 years, 3 months ago

We all love soldering with TS100. Light, small, best thing in the world! (unless, of course, you need to solder thick wires). But... what is it at its rear end? DC jack? Is this the year 2013? Nah man, I want to have USB C with it! What is it you say? TS80 already exists? Sure, only a 9V version with no real PD features. I want my iron to suck in all that USB C goodness up to 20 volts!
Making an adaptor is not difficult, you just need 2 components: a USB C trigger board and a 5.5mm DC Jack. A few suggestions:
The trigger board I used had the following dimensions: 18.5x10.3x1.0 mm
It also conveniently had 2 pads broken out underneath so soldering the naked jack was even easier. The resulting joint is very sturdy.
Don't overheat the jack while soldering, this could break the barrel insulation.
The trigger could be set to 5V, 9V, 12V and 20V. 20 volts work best for me to power the iron either with a USB C laptop charger or a PD power bank.
Oh right, the case. It's a simple and ergonomic design that follows TS100 exactly, so in the end of the day, you are just adding 30mm to the length of your iron, no extra bulk!
The newly soldered converter simply slides into the case with a nice click. That whole contraption, in turn, is plugged into the iron and screwed onto it using its grounding screw (that you might want to replace with a slightly longer one).
The adaptor can be removed and taken apart in seconds if you need access to the mini-USB port or just want to use the DC jack.
A link to the board I used. The item delivered did not match the pictures, so don't be surprised that the colour is different. All the USB C triggers I got from various listings seemed to be the same size thought.https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001163576292.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4duNwQia