Atten rework station clone experience

The chinese YOUYUE 8586 from Ebay- what I can say about it

First you may looke on:

YOUYUE 8586 soldering/ rework station review

The history how I got mine:

One, or the most important tool when doing electroinics is the soldering iron.

My very first soldering iron was a simple, easy and inexpencie soldering iron, a Weller one, that you could plug into the mains and just solder off.

But using this soldering iron not being able to adjust the tmeperature on it, really sucked. Using it on some PCBs the Pads came of because of that heat and desoldered parts loked like old rusted parts from the scrap yard, I thought myself "Finally I need an new one".

But there was a problem:

What do you guys think, how much a 14 yo guy can spent on a soldering iron?

My budget was not more that 50€, because I did not wanted to spent that much money for my soldering station and also have the ability to have some extra features on it.

So I went to YouTube an looked for some Atten soldering station reviews. The first thing that showed up was Dave Jone`s review about that Atten hot- air station. I thought myself what is that thing in the Thuimbnail and clicked on it. I was, who would thought of that, one of these Hot- Air blower thingies, how I´d call them back then.

I looked them up on Ebay to see what their Price was and that Atten hot air station cost about 70€ (of course I could pay 70 but I anted extra features), that was too much for me. After a little bit of more research I found a hot air and soldering station combined in one machine, only for 50€, and I thought "I want one for my birthday!". So my father bought one for me on Ebay.

But I had to pay it :(

Anyways, after a few days it came in the mail, so i even made a review for YouTube, that I deleted because i thought that video was bullsh.

So now I am using it about 2 years and 1- 3 times per week, sometimes even only 1 time per month and I have to say it is great.

Some pros and cons:

Pros:

- VERY cheap

- 2 machines in 1

- a long lasting tip/s

- a LOT of different tips you can buy for the iron

- a varity of nozzles fot the heat gun

- simple to use, easy temperature adjustment etc.

- temperature from 200 to 480 °C (enough for me!)

- light, small and compact design

- easy to change tips (also while iron is on)

- ESD protected (or basically mains earthed)

- you can disconnect the iron and hot air gui friom the supply (some models don`t)

- good enough thermal capacity (not the best but still good)

- reasonable built quality

- reasonable heatup time (iron about 1 minute, blower maybe 30 sec. to full temp.)

Cons:

- mains connector wobblinafter some time

- mains switch only disconnects secondary side ot transformer, so unit is ON!!!

- short cables for iron/ hot air gun ( i replaced the iron cable, the blower cable is ok)

- display shows blower temperatuire only

- HORRIBLE iron stand (I chanded mine to a weller one)

So as you can see the station does ok with a good 14/ 19 points. There are some things to complain about it, but you can live with that.

Link to the YouTube version of the YouTube version of this (click on text)

Some pictures: