Simple ATmega8 soldering station

At some point, I decided that using the same equipment by two people is neither a good nor practical idea. There was a need to make a second soldering station (for my son). The purchase was out of the question for ambitious reasons, I did not want to build something more complicated than the absolute minimum. It was supposed to be small, cheap, working.
It fell on a project from the Internet.
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/projects/do-it-yourself-soldering-station-with-an-atmega8/ by Cezar Chirila.
The station fit in the housing of the CD station, which was lying around the workshop. The front and back plates are L-shaped remnants of plexiglass (the perfect color was chosen), screwed into the housing in the place that used to be occupied by the drive PCB. MeanWell 24V 52W power supply instead of transformer. There is no standby mode - you can add a resistor on the switch (reed switch? miniswitch?) in the WO feedback.
The temperature indication works as it works, it shows something, one of the board versions has a place for inserting a PR in the amplifier coupling, if someone has something, they can calibrate it.
Painting with spray varnishes, with the imposition of subsequent strips of masking tape - to somehow mask the appearance of this beggarly casing. The support is made of another piece of plexiglass bent at an angle of 120 degrees.
Costs: basically the power supply, the rest was in drawers and boxes.
The stock as you can see - typical, Solomon 24V 48W.
That's it. My tiles, the rest according to the link. Sufficient for extensive electronics.



In the archive everything that the author of the project has made available, some test .ino in which I do not remember what I checked and pcb.
Comments
Hi, There's something about this station :) By the way, memories were revived - 20 years ago I had the same flask operated by a home-made station, but purely analog, with a diode bar-graph on the... [Read more]
Interesting and simple design. My soldering iron is starting to malfunction, and although I have already ordered a kit from China to put on a T12 soldering iron, I am tempted to do something like this. ... [Read more]
I will stick to the schematic of this system. 1. There is a generation sensor in the flask, which is a thermocouple. There is no cold junction compensation. Below is the correct layout: https://obrazki.elektroda.pl/6183792400_1676384640_thumb.jpg... [Read more]
As soon as you make your own station (I think that it makes sense for a hobbyist, because you can have really good quality soldering at a reasonable cost), I suggest you get interested in the Weller RT/RTM... [Read more]
There is a K thermocouple in the Solomon handle, as in the Weller RT bits. Nothing stands in the way of lowering the power supply to 12 V, setting the appropriate WO gain and using a Weller tip for this... [Read more]
The power socket needs improvement in my opinion. Neither the power supply nor the tip is grounded. [Read more]
Wow, the factory does ungrounded too: https://art-med-sklep.com/img/9647/soldering-station-analogowa-48w-150-420-c-sl20 Of course, a valid point. On the other hand, I've been using ungrounded soldering... [Read more]
That's not true. It all depends on the MOSFET, the switched currents and, above all, the switching frequency. For the mentioned IRF540N, VGSth is 2-4V, so ATMega powered from 5V will fully open this... [Read more]
Unfortunately, sometimes when the mosfet falls, the gate is broken and the up output burns. I know that it is not a terrible cost, but sometimes the problem with the batch, e.g. after years. [Read more]
Hello A properly selected Zener diode connected in parallel to the gate circuit of the MosFet transistor should in total protect the integrated circuit against such damage. [Read more]
pomysł świetny ale mogłeś kupić zamiast tej płytki sterownik do stacji kupić coś pokroju tego https://pl.aliexpress.com/item/1005004447327119.html?_t=pvid%3A11436dd0-1bea-476f-984f-38b3d3e2d3e6&afTraceInfo=1005004447327119__pc__pcBridgePPC__xxxxxx__1679860514&spm=a2g0o.ppclist... [Read more]
I could even buy the whole station ;) [Read more]
Way to go. I like this initiative very much. The more so that somewhere once I had a somewhat similar idea, only lack of time and stubbornness. The design was with 3 temperature memories to make it... [Read more]
Controlling the MOSFET directly from the microcontroller output is a complete misunderstanding, but these are the diagrams from this type of websites, so I will spare myself the words, because everything... [Read more]
These types of statements are a complete misunderstanding. Once again - electronics is not magic with rules written in magic books. For a given MCU output performance and transistor type (mainly gate capacitance),... [Read more]
I agree with point (2). My TS100 soldering iron benefits greatly from the presence of an accelerometer, thanks to which it "knows" that no one has touched it for 1 minute and it`s time to turn off. This... [Read more]