T12 Digital Temperature Controlled Soldering Station

Peter ScargillGeneral14 Comments on T12 Digital Temperature Controlled Soldering Station

Another potential winner from Banggood, or rather would be, if I’d had my act together when ordering. The V2.1S T12 Digital Temperature Controlled Soldering Station is a small, neat soldering station complete with iron and combined bit/element – it looks good and well built.  I would advise getting spare parts – see below.

T12 Soldering Station

The bit that came with it includes the heater element, but wasn’t the best choice of default tip for me as I like the fine tips for SMT soldering. Also though it uses a standard power lead as you may find on your laptop, that does not come with the unit. Fortunately I have many spares.

tmpB5A1At first glance the front panel OLED display looks trivial but it isn’t, there are many options. The unit came without instructions, all set up in Chinese.

I panicked for a few minutes, I should know better as the Banggood site always has instructions or links and sure enough, plenty of info up there.– more info, a video and pictures on their site. I won’t open up the box as the Banggood video does that if you can handle the advertorial nature if the video.

Spares

The soldering tip that came with the station is called TK-12 Shape K. Personally I like T12-ILS – the fine tips. It is all on the website. In short, you get what you see. If I’d been more on the ball I’d have spare bits and a place to put the iron as against lying on my bench waiting to burn something. As it is I bought a yellow sponge separately. Right now I’m off to get more bits, I found a spare iron stand.

I have a soldering SMT station with heat gun which I blogged about elsewhere but it is BIG compared to this compact unit.

The link for more info, spares, pricing etc.  https://goo.gl/yHXJ27

14 thoughts on “T12 Digital Temperature Controlled Soldering Station”

  1. Thank you Peter.
    What started off as a search for replacement irons, lost mine in my post-divorce clean-up……has resulted in a fantastic find, love your blog and reviews.
    Merry Christmas to you all.

    Best Regards.
    John.

    UK

  3. I bought one of these (there are many, many clones) some time ago and love it.
    Mine is labeled ShineNow and had a, … er, let’s say relatively decent English manual included.

    What I love about this iron is:
    – It is ready to go in less than 8 seconds
    – sleep mode (adjustable) – just move the handle and it will auto wake up
    – very small footprint
    – firmware can be updated
    – many settings to be fiddled with – didn’t have to set any, though, worked perfectly out of the box

    Have not used my trusty old Hakko 93x clone ever since I got the T12 iron.
    Wonder how long the OLED screen will last, but as all parts are readily available and more or less standard, even that would be easy to replace.

    The only tips I added were two fine chisel tips. Bought those on Aliexpress, surprisingly good quality.

    Iron bought on Amazon.ca:

    1. Forgot to mention, temp was spot on +/- 5C, tested with my Hakko clone temp tester. But the firmware allows for very easy adjustment if necessary.

      1. Magic. Thank you for that. Saves me setting fire to my meter. Indeed there are temperature and time offsets in the controls along with everything else.

    2. OLEDs are a constant source of concern for me – the little 0.96 blue ones you get off Ebay – 138*32 and 128* 64… trust me they don’t last forever. I put a couple on two FriendlyArm Nanos and theft them running in Spain for 6 months 24/7. When I went back there, the OLEDs were all but screwed.

      At least with LCDs it was mainly the (sometimes replaceable) backlight that went. Even normal LEDs are no-where near what they are cracked up to be. I find RGB LEDs to be generally very long lasting but the white are very variable. Similarly OLED displays… some last, some don’t. Everyone uses the LED design guide figures for lifespan at sensible current and temperature but they rarely get run that way.

      Early days but I think I love this iron – it is all down to spares – I need to get a set – and a spare display might not be a bad idea.

      Time flies with things like this… I can hardly believe it is 6 years since I bought my last soldering station – and I lost the spares in a house move. Thankfully functionally identical spares are wiely available.

      This iron uses a combined bit/element and so having spares from day 1 sounds sensible.

      As for settings – when I first opened up the box I nearly had a fit as no instructions. As you’ll see however there is more than enough info on the Banggood site so I’m happy.

      Thanks for the feedback.

      1. I bought two different tip kinds here:
        https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Soldering-Iron-Tips-T12-BC2-series-for-Hakko-Soldering-Rework-Station-FX-951-FX-952/32536280617.html

        Guessing the fine tip you want would be “BCF1”?
        (rightmost in the tip selection menu on the Ali page)

        I went by this guide from Hakko to decide what tip shape and size, as it descibes them well including giving the approx size to expect.
        https://www.hakko.com/english/tip_selection/series_t12.html

        Have a great time over the holidays, everyone! 🙂

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