Soldering Iron Simple Power Control

170

02:16:40

The simplest way to adjust your soldering iron's power output is to add a diode to only pass half the mains to it. This way it divides the power in half which in this case will be from 80W to 40W. This is useful with high power soldering irons which tend to burn down the beak pretty fast at maximum power, and while 80W will melt almost any soldering tin, 40W will surely do a pretty fine job. The diode can be a 1N4007 and the switch can be any just make sure that the switch metal parts aren't connected to any leads because they may become at mains potential. 

published 9 years ago

WTFCircuit

9 years ago

The diode wouldn't heat up a lot?

thebugger

9 years ago

No, it wouldn't. 1N4007 is rated at 1A. The draw is barely 1/4 of 1A. Plus the voltage drop is minimal compared to the full drop from the soldering iron.

hurz

9 years ago

According to the datasheet 1n4007 forward drop voltage at 1A is below 1.1V So worst case 1.1V×530mA = ~580mW max power. No problem for 1n4007. @thebugger, the emission coefficient you choose is even quite pessimistic ;-)

thebugger

9 years ago

I'm not sure about the coefficient. I chose it randomly to hit the 1V drop

hurz

9 years ago

But the drop is now 1.6V with only 530mA.

thebugger

9 years ago

Oops i must have overshot it. I fixed it.

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