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Messages - joey120373

1
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
I have some better connectors on the way, in the mean time I soldered another cheep connector to the cable. This time I paid very close attention to pre-tinning the tabs on the connector. There appears to be 2 types of metal in the connector, the small strip that is for connecting wires does not readily want to accept the solder, but with some flux it will eventually. Down at the base of that strip it appears that the contacts are crimped to the strip, and that part at the base REALLY doesn't want to wet. A good dose of flux, heat and physical scratching with the iron tip it will eventually wet. After getting a good tin on all of the pins, I attached the cable and it seems to be good now. I still plan on replacing it as soon as the new connectors arrive.

Now i just need a project to start soldering..... another unisolder perhaps....
2
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
Success!
After i re-flowed the board, i re-soldered the ID resistors and gave it another quick test. seems to be working fine.

I tested the heat accuracy by melting some 63/37 lead solder on the tip, seems to melt right at ~184, goes solid at 180-182.

I do have an issue with the connector i am using. The connector mounted in the front panel was fine, however the cable side connector turned out to be a real pain in the rear to solder to, the solder tabs are also really flimsy. I bought them cheep on ebay, and now I'm regretting it. I managed to get the tip red hot once due to a poor connection at the connector. So i put in an order for some higher quality connectors.
While I am waiting on those i will clean up both boards and work on getting it all cased up.
3
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
Thanks to all for the help. I’ve been working long hours at work, so I haven’t been able to sit down and start testing voltages. I did take a few min last night and look the front board over under magnification. I wasn’t happy with the way some of my solder joints looked, so I smeared a healthy dose of flux on the board and basically reflowed everything I could on the right hand side of the board. The OLED was covering some parts but I got in there as best I could with my hot air station. Only took a few minuets.
I let the board cool a bit and powered it back up with the CAL resistor in place.
Now the ADC reading is ~490 and I was able to adjust the pot to get exactly 1000. So I must have had a bad joint or a solder short somewhere.
Happy with the progress I called it a night, I’ll work on getting the ID working in a day or two.

Thanks again.
4
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
Thanks for all the help, i am going back and trying to read as much of this thread as i can, trying to gain some insight into how this controller works. Thanks for the tip on page 139, seems my issue is similar to others.

There are a few questions i cannot find answers too, yet.

1, the ID resistors at senseA and/or senseB make a voltage divider feeding into the ID pin, correct? and for a JBC C245 iron I need a 150R - from SenseA to ID  and a 5.6k between Vout2- and ID, as per this:
 
  Outer shell (green wire) connected to EARTH and SENSEB
  - Heater positive(red wire) connected to Vout1- and SENSEA
  - Heater negative(blue wire) connected to Vout1+
  - 150ohm between ID and Vout1-
  - 5.6k between ID and Vout2-
and i should also see values of 2 and 45 on the upper line of the calibration screen when it sees the correct ID for a 245 correct?

what voltages, or voltage potentials should i see at these points, Vout1- and SENSEA, Vout1+, Vout2-, SENSEB  and the ID, with the unisolder in calibration mode and the sense resistors installed?
Right now, Vout1- appears to be ground ( FET ON) , Vout2- has Zero volts ( its FET OFF ), ill have to recheck the other voltages.
so i can't see how the divider can work properly, since as near as i can tell, Vout2- is floating, am i understanding this correctly?
and if Vout1- is grounded (as it is on my board, ) how can i get any voltage on the ID input?

For now I am going to try to get the ID at least working by just connecting the ID resistors, if I can get that working I will then try to get it to calibrate with the 10R resistor. For now, The unit continues to show "NO INSTRUMENT" and the CALIBRATION screen, the ADC remains 1023 regardless of any thing i do, outside of measuring the 10R cal resistor with my bench-top DVM ( this was an accident, i was double checking its value and thought i had powered down the board, i realized i had not, but i did notice that the ADC value actually wound down to 0, so i took that as a sign that at least the controller was seeing the cal resistor, the circuit just has a fault somewhere).

When plugging in the iron, with the ID resistors, the readings on the cal screen go from 25 25 to 23 23, so i think its seeing something on the ID input.

So the plan is for now to desolder the irin from the connector, and just try to get the ID to work, then i will tackle the rest.

Thanks again.

Joe
5
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
Quote
    Q10, Q11, U2. Voltage on C19 should be around 14V. Check continuity between mosfet sources and GND and between driver outputs to the gates. If all other OK, try replacing U3. DO NOT connect cartridge until you get controller calibrated.



I have 14.9 volts on C19, and the gate of Q10, Q10 appears to be ON, i get 1.5 ohms across Q10 source and drain.
Q11 has 0.111v on its gate, and it jumps to 0.222v regularly, at timed intervels ~1 second.

U2

Checked for continuity from cal resistor to pins 9 and 10 on the front board, everything seems good. No idea what the sense voltages should be. I can get the R: value on the calibration screen to 1043 by pushing the "+" button till the current is maxed
0 256, but the ADC reading never changes from 1023.

Quick question about RC2, what is it supposed to adjust? i thought it was the "CAL" adjustment, or is it a fine adjust for the temp?

Still hoping i can figure this thing out. Any other suggestions?
6
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
[quote author="afedorov"][quote author="joey120373"]lower mosfets? not sure what mosfets these would be..[/quote]
Q10, Q11, U2. Voltage on C19 should be around 14V. Check continuity between mosfet sources and GND and between driver outputs to the gates. If all other OK, try replacing U3. DO NOT connect cartridge until you get controller calibrated.[/quote]

Thank you! i will check these as soon as possible, busy with work at the moment, but that helps a lot. Unfortunately i did not RTFM well enough and i did connect the iron before i tried to calibrate it, so i may have damaged it through my own haste?

thanks again, ill report back after i've made these checks.
7
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
[quote author="afedorov"][quote author="joey120373"]
if i plug the iron in, the iron ID changes to 23 23
[/quote]
Check lower mosfets, it's driver and 12V rail, current shunt also worth to be checked.[/quote]

lower mosfets? not sure what mosfets these would be..
8
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
hoping someone can help.

finally got around to wiring it all up, OLED works fine, buttons work fine, but when i plug in the JBC t245 iron, wired up as to instructions, it reports "no instrament"

So i tried to calibrate it with a 10 ohm 0.1% resistor between senseA and Vout1- the ADC reading is pegged at 1023, weather or not the resistor is in circuit or not, adjusting Rc2 has no effect, however, when i attempted to verify that the cal resistor was 10 ohms, with mt benchtop dvom, i can get the ADC reading to wind down to 0.

with the cal resistor in place, the iron ID : 25 25
                                              current : 0  128
                                              ADC        1023
                                              R              2087
                                              room          27

if i plug the iron in, the iron ID changes to 23 23
so i think at least some of the connections are ok, but the fact i cant calibrate it is my first new hurtle.
any help is apriciated.
9
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
So after shelving this project for some months, I decided to give it a go again.
I wasn’t seeing anything on the OLED. I tried using jumper wires to attach other “compatable” oleds, like the adafruit and some cheep eBay units. Still nothing.
I wasn’t sure if I was getting the micro controller programmed properly, so I was getting frustrated trying to figure out where the problem was.
I ended up buying a lab scope to see if I was getting anything on the SPI bus to the OLED, and as it turned out I was getting a good CS, clock and MOSI signals.
So I had to guess that I Has in fact gotten the micro programmed. So I turned my attention to the OLED board. I was not getting the 12v I needed from the boost converter. So I ordered up another boost controller chip, along with a handful of other components just for good measure. I replaced the little guy and re-soldered the OLED board to the main board, and now it seems to be working! Woo-hoo.
I’m just powering the board with 3.3v for now, it’s showing an error code ( 21 I think ) and a lost power description. I’m assuming this is perfectly normal as it’s not seeing the 24 volts from the power board. Not sure why I could not get any of the other OLED boards to work, I must have tried 4 or 5 various boards that used the appropriate driver chip.
So now I’m looking forward to getting it all wired up and tested before I mount it in the enclosure. I may have to order a smaller transformer though, the one I got from digikey is a bit large and may not fit inside the enclosure.
10
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
OK, i found the problem, it was the idiot who put it together.
Some moron (me...) installed the OLED board upside down..... DOPE.

so i pulled the OLED board off and turned it right side up. Still no life from the OLED.
Looking at the schems, i cant see how installing the board upside down could hurt anything, but maybe it did?
It would put 3.3v on the OLEDVDD pin and OLEDVDD on the VCC pin, but as these are both basically the same voltage i cant see how that would hurt.
GND would be put to an unused pin, pin 4 of P1, and it would mess up and short the SPI and D/C pins together, but i dont see how that could actually damage anything.
Yet the OLED still seems to be dead.
I think the processor is working, because i do see  ~1.9v  on the CLK pin, didnt have a scope handy to test the SPI bus, so just put a meter on it.

Going to pull it back off ( a real pain in the rear ) and wire up an Adafruit display to it just to see if i can get anything out of it.

is it possible i damaged something on either board by flipping the display upside down?

Thanks
Joe
11
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
"Did you make the rest of shorting at a front side?"

Yes, I did the front side shorts, i posted pics of the front side a page or so back.
I ordered the display from BuyDisplay, pretty sure i checked the specs to make sure it was a 12 volt display, ill double check that though.
Looks like i will need to pull the OLED board off the main board to do some trouble shooting. Its possible i overheated the boost driver when i was installing the inductor.
12
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
My Pickit 3 clone finally arrived in the mail a couple of days ago so i tried to program my unit.
I am using a mac, so as near as i can tell i have to use the MPLABX IDE to program the device.

I have never used a PIC before, so the process and the IDE are all new to me.

I set up the MPLABX for the PIC32MX564F128H, and set the PICKit3 as the programmer, I imported the
US_Firmware.X.production.hex from the Standalone folder, Set the PICKit3 to power the device at 3.25volts and hit the
"make and program device" button.

In the "Output" window i got this message:

*****************************************************

Connecting to MPLAB PICkit 3...

Currently loaded firmware on PICkit 3
Firmware Suite Version.....01.51.08
Firmware type..............PIC32MX

Programmer to target power is enabled - VDD = 3.250000 volts.
Target device PIC32MX564F128H found.
Device ID Revision = A2

Device Erased...

Programming...

The following memory area(s) will be programmed:
program memory: start address = 0x1d000000, end address = 0x1d00bfff
boot config memory
configuration memory
Programming/Verify complete

***************************************************

So I assume that it programmed correctly?
I get nothing on the OLED, no text lines or anything, no evidence of life at all from the OLED, however according to the MPLAB it looks as though the .hex file was loaded. I am not powering the board externally, just using the pickit3 to power it.

So i was hoping to ask a couple of questions,
1, does the info i got in the output window look correct?
2, any ideas why the OLED might not be working ( outside of some hardware issue/error on my part when building it )?
 the OLED is all soldered to the board now, so checking voltages will be a pain. I did short the 3 jumpers on the back.

Thanks.
13
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
Got it all put back together, now i have 3.3v and -0.6 volt, great!

JBC 245 iron should be showing up in a day or two so I'm getting close to testing it. OLED is on a slow boat from china, not sure when that will show up, but if i get impatient i may just rob one from an Adafruit display board, I have a few of those, as well as a few cheep knock offs laying around.

I also ordered a clone Pic Kit 3 off of Flee-bay, I have never tried to program a Pic before, so that should be interesting.
14
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
Ok!
I was afraid U3 was the culprit, so I removed it, no luck, still a short to ground on the 3.3v rail.

So I pulled L1 off the board and that was the culprit.
It was what I had thought, the large pads on the bottom of the inductor were allowing a path to ground through the stitching vias that are under Ruth the inductor. I will put a piece of caption tape under it defore I solder it back down. Hopefully I didn’t damage the controller (u3).
15
Project logs / Re: Really universal soldering controller
Hmmmm....

well, initial tests are not good!

I powered up the back board with ~ 20v DC, just to test the 3.3v and -0.7v rails.

i have the -0.7 volts, but no 3.3v.

further testing, i have a short to ground somewhere on the 3.3v rail.

I removed C2, C3, and C4, short is still there. looking at the schems, that leaves C21, U3 and U1 as likely candidates..

I am also wondering if i may have a solder bridge to ground under L1. None of those remaining components will be easy to remove,

Wondering where you all think i should start, jas anyone else had this issue?

Thanks Joe

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