so what we up to today gordon today we're looking at the ts-100 soldering
iron specifically for soldering led tape
so why are you not recommending the soldering iron we've seen in previous
video presentations on the channel okay well this is uh this is quite an
older model gary it's been around for some time it must be
in your collection of tools if it's an old tool yeah it's a metcal soldering iron
it's fantastic but probably built for people who are going to be doing
thousands and thousands of joints day in day out not
so someone who's going to be doing lead possibly on site so
it's a bit bulky and possibly most of all it's quite expensive
so you're saying you found this ts 100 that will probably be that nice
compromise for somebody who's doing occasional soldiering joints
yeah so i found i did some research and this this ts 100 kept coming up in the
in the in the various videos and reviews and it's available from an online
retailer with next air delivery for free so i thought i'd get one okay well whip
out the boxing and let's have a look at what you have got so i actually bought a
full kit that included the power supply and probably the world's smallest
soldering iron holder so i don't think they come with the standard kit they
were the deluxe version let's just give you a
little bit of a reference there against my thumb yes that is
microscopic i would suggest yeah so this uh comes in a box some instructions
obviously never read them so we'll come back to them later so
here's the here's the kit itself so here's the main handle it's
got the electronics in this is a temperature control line so i
think when we set it we can actually set the temperature here
okay and here's the tip so this slightly different to a traditional
solder and it's actually a tip and heating element combined
in one unit all right so if i had to get a a different tip on it i'd actually get
the whole thing to replace yeah and i believe they're reasonably
priced compared to our legacy soldering iron
i don't think that's a major operation so you can put it together for me got to
put it together so it comes with this tiny little hex
key and it looks like there's some spare screws in there because they are quite
small so you probably lose them we probably will yeah so just wind that
one back and line that one back so i can see
the barrels clear in there now right so i'm going to put the solder on
in with the tip facing that's always handy yes
i would suggest yeah oh pretty nice it looks like something maybe james bond
would keep in a top pocket when he invented the emergency
yeah kind of a poison dart in there but actually speaking of darts in it
it has a feel of of a dart really you know brings back memories of Jockey
Wilson and Jim Bowen possibly you know
springs area there's a little drop of the uh uh liquid uh
refreshment okay so don't think we need many droplets here so let's just punch a
little bit into get rid of the packaging okay there we
go so yes and it goes with we've moistened
the pad and we are now ready to go so that's the
the power supply so the power part for this on the back if you want to have a
okay here and there gary have a look um just give me the camera
so say you can buy the power supply separately the one thing i don't like
about this lead is pvc so if you leave the iron sort of if it
accidentally touches there you're gonna end up melting chunks out of it
okay uh wherever legacy iron has a silicon
um a silicon lead on it okay so this this take a dc input between 12 and 24
volts right so if you were clever and you
wanted to be on site you could probably make a portable power supply to
to connect to with a couple of lead acid gel lead acid batteries or something
like that okay so you're going to fire this up and you
you think we're going to be able to see the temperature
straight away let's have a look we'll press something that we haven't read the
instructions for so you'll press both buttons press the one there
it's there so there we go 25 oh oh it's off
well so we're saying the temperature's climbing from 25 already
yeah what temperature do we need it for this osram tape
so the osram tape so they're recommended instructions 350 degrees
right so i'm gonna have to increase that here so um
let's get oh there you go i'll press that then you can see i've come up with
the temperature setting so i'm going to dial that
up to 350. so let's see if that'll climb to 350 are we
at 350 now or oh no now little arrows saying it's going up
wow so that now is at 350 already yeah so also i'll give you
that instruction 350 degrees on the solenoid
and the maximum touch time you can be in there during your joints five seconds
so that relates back to the power of the iron has it got enough oomph to get the
heat in there this is a 65 watt iron right at 24 volts
so you can obviously probably less when you're so just get that to recap so we
needed it 350 degrees for this tape and we can only hold the soldering
on the tape from maximum of five seconds yeah and we covered that
in a video that we did on connecting to led strip
where we looked at both the solder and the insulation displacement and we
recommend if you get a chance after this video may
be checking that one out yeah there's even a hidden video of gary
gary have an attempt at soldering to have a look at so that's uh that's worth
a look so it is it isn't so you're going to
turn that show we'll come back onto the roving cannon
what you've got down here so yeah
so people ask us about solder as well so this is a thin gauge
uh it soldered with no lead in it you can't really have a lead solder in
europe anymore so that melted pretty quick
okay um i'm going to use my little brillo pad here
wow that looks like a tip off something that may have appeared in a
i don't know a science fiction film back in 1977 i would think that looks like a
drawing to me oh yeah or your mum's brill or pad
okay so we've got some led tape here on the soldermate so we like the solder
mate because it holds the led tape in place and it has this nice
heatsink behind it to make sure you don't
put too much heat into the plastic and melt it
um so let's just try and tin the pads up first and see how we can do it now the
pads on the osram one are quite large pads yeah so wow that was quick so
that's tinning the pads first and that's a
technique that's expected australian like people to tin them pads first
yeah so you were on there less than five seconds yeah sold and melted really
quickly and you're now ready to introduce the positive and negative
conductors i'm just going to rest the soldering iron in there so
the problem is this is quite lightweight so that's where that
that stand isn't possibly the best right so you get yourself prepared there and
obviously we'll uh be looking in closely but again
check out those videos in this series on led strip where we look at
reason price led strip we look at cutting led strip and in this case we're
not necessarily giving a master class on
soldering as we've done in a previous video
it's all about this ts 100 soldering iron are you ready
yeah i'm ready i'll get the cam ready so here we go then so we're coming back in
and you're gonna do the positive conductor first yeah
with a maximum of five seconds in order to get that connected
i've done that wow right okay let's have a little look in there let's
let's not have a cheat right okay that looks probably not my best joint in the
world but very much it's hard to actually solder on
camera and keep your mitts out of your out the camera angle
yeah that's my excuse yeah well it's the one you're using so we're going in now
with the obviously the negative okay in order to
make that connection so a little bit fiddling around just
making sure you get it placed correctly on top of that
soldered pad before you come back in with the solder and what's your feelings
at the minute on the soldering iron it's good i mean it's very lightweight
if you're used to different yeah very lightweight
um i mean you might slip i wouldn't be careful you don't slip along there and
and touch the element right a little guard there might be again it'll shroud
yeah to get in with the the actual close-up
cam so let's have a see if you're any better this time i
don't think it could be any worse probably
you're chasing it around the pad there i see so yeah i'll just kick that over
okay and then people will be saying well your fingers are closed
oh we had that last time burnt my fingers a lot of times
okay considering that's well pretty much live on cam
i think that's that's a pretty pretty reasonable effort but of course as
always the proofs in the pudding whether it will actually energize in other words
can gordon liven this up and we see that these
leds illuminate okay so you strip those ends back off
so lots of positives here i would suggest we like the fact that it got up
to temperature 350 degrees very rapidly that was quick
yeah that was good maybe we'd like to see a shroud maybe similar
to what we see on gs38 test leads won't we where you're stopping yourself
slipping towards the light it's something sort of slipping towards
the heated elements and if i was doing it i'd try and get a lighter so
silicon leaders a bit more flexible right and a bit longer actually but
uh oh there we go oh it's always best to be lucky i would suggest in life isn't
it so yeah okay so yeah that was done again remember it's a
review of the soldering iron not necessarily
gordon's technique for soldering so we've done that in a while
but the the proof will be in the pudding when you do it the second time and i've
got here i've done this on a previous video some
reasonably priced led strip and now these are let's get the cam on let me
show everybody what these look like now we are talking about
microscopic terminals in which you've got a solder on to
okay so uh yeah so we will love a challenger efix so
i'll set this up while you prepare yourself and let's see if
the uh soldiering on without a very small tip probably this will be its home
turf i would suggest a nice tiny dot too much to make your
connections onto so if i was doing the osram tech all day i
would pick a bigger tip size okay i think you might be all right and i
wouldn't suggest they need perhaps tinny maybe tin the tips of the actual
conductor i'm going to turn them off let's come in and have a look they are
microscopic we go i don't know who's shaking the
most me or you i think wow that was actually that was wow it
was made for that wasn't it it was made for that they are two
perfect beads of solder okay so it's all down to you now to
obviously make all the necessary errors now as you position your conductors in
that is yeah you've not got a lot of room to get those onto
either so gordon's fiddling away now trying to make sure he lines those up
right the solder mate comes in really handy now imagine trying to hold both of
those into position that would be uh i would suggest a very
tricky job but now this is it this is the uh the pressured moment
okay here you go shaking around
that is that was brilliant that was one dump that was one done yeah that's held
on okay so let's go for the uh the next one
so one's all right but can you get the next
one positioned correctly so we're almost suggesting it's actually
better on the inexpensive led strip maybe
that's a little bit larger the problem is that's not a problem it's a good
thing it has a lot of copper you need more heat this as we saw in
that other video again check out another one we have on this
it's not many of the uh earth's resources been buried into this led
strip i would suggest copper was very thin right give us a
second yeah we're coming back in we want to see whether you you fluked it
the first time so let's have a look see the comments on the ships and everything
coming well i'm shaking as well so i'm not really helping here there we go job
done and that's a little look at that well as always it's only if it
illuminates all right i've got to be careful here
because this is a 12 volt led tech oh yeah so let's not punch
there is a video on that as well where we look at the pros and cons for using
24 volt and 12 volts and we discuss where both of them
come into their own don't wear that video as well that was a question asked
to us and we answered that question as part of this series
already i'm ready wow it's better to be lucky isn't it as always yeah
i wouldn't leave that on too long because no you should never shouldn't do
that either but that works so yeah i like that iron
actually i mean that's the uh yeah as i said would probably have a a
few different tip sizes for different uh different jobs and a different holder
but for yeah but we pulled that out the box
you know you've had to come in almost you know first attempt to see if
you can do that with no real practice you can only get better by practicing
and knowing your own tool you've had this work you said 50 years
you've had it you were about 12 when you got it so yeah when they first
discovered the lead this was the second invention they made
what i would say on this a little bit of research on that you can actually
uh i'm led to believe this has got open source software in it you can actually
put your own logo oh wow on the display
and chip it so it goes to an even higher temperature it goes to 400 degrees but i
think you can go beyond that so if you if you're an expert on there
um yeah let us know if you can uh if you
can chip it and put your own logo on there put the efix one on and send it to
us if you're really good that would be good
yeah as always we're interested in your comments i think you've got a favorite
soldier in on have you used the st 100 if i said that correctly uh ts
100 characters yes 100 and as always
there'll be a link in the description of where you can find this soldier online
so make sure you check that out but we're interested
in your soldering tips have you got any top tips or sold into led strips
something he still likes to call led tip okay yeah we will get over that
we're always interested in your comments and we'll try and get back to
as many as we can