USA, but the product may have been shipped from China if I remember correctly.

What does the soldering iron's plug look like? It would be somewhat unusual in the US to have an ordinary fixture run on 220V. Therefore, the problem may be that our soldering iron is just not getting enough voltage. The plug should tell us what the voltage you are getting is.

John

 

OK, you refuse to answer the question.

 

He is getting around 17W on the soldering iron which isn't strong enough to solder bigger surfaces.

 

Thanks for the replies.

The iron reads 22o volts 60 W. As for the flux, radioshack only had one size, and way more than I need so I didn't get any. A tiny jar would be nice. I might check ebay or other online place if they have free shipping.



I'm not sure the pot is in the picture, I mainly took pictures of screw locations and wiring. The unit has several pots, and the solder spots look similar to the smaller ones in the pic. I might re-check to see if there's room to scrape without damaging the traces.

Hello,

That doesnt make any sense. Why would you take pictures of anything other than the pot in question? We cant see what is going on if yoiu take pictures of the inside of somebodies TV set down the street
We need to see at least one picture of the POT itself, not anything else, and it must include the hard to solder terminals. More than one picture is better too so we can see the entire view of the problem, so pictures at a couple angles would help also.

 

Hello,

That doesnt make any sense. Why would you take pictures of anything other than the pot in question? We cant see what is going on if yoiu take pictures of the inside of somebodies TV set down the street
We need to see at least one picture of the POT itself, not anything else, and it must include the hard to solder terminals. More than one picture is better too so we can see the entire view of the problem, so pictures at a couple angles would help also.

Well I really appreciate everyone's willingness to help. The picture I provided was taken when I disassembled the unit for repair. I wasn't keen on doing it again, just to take more pics, since there are so many screws and layers to get to the pot, and some phillips heads are tricky to get a good fit with the screw driver without risking wearing.

But seriously though, the pot's solder joints look just like the ones in the pic. If seeing the pot helps, I got a replacement so I might upload it if it helps. Thanks. Next post I'll probably upload some pics of the iron as well, just in case.

 

Ok if you're interested, here are pics of the flux (hard), the iron, and the label showing the wattage and voltage.


Hope you can read it. 220 V and TLW-60. One main thing I wonder is what type of flux that is. Although it says 'service welding flux', not sure what it means. All I know is that it's very hard and brittle, not at all like flux paste that's meant to help soldering. So what's this used for? Btw, when I stuck the heated iron into it, it would kind of would fry, but wasn't of any help since I've no idea how to apply it to the solder joints.

 

Its flux for welding not soldering.I think that flux has higher melting point or maybe its not applied like normal flux.

 

It's a little easier to identify the box when it is photographed right-side up:


A search on Longyuan rosin flux gets lots of hits for similar looking products. Here is one:


I believe the label on the TS's box is simply a victim of translation. It is most likely very dried our rosin or another organic type of electronic flux that is dried out.

What baffles me is the reluctance of the TS to address the fact that his soldering iron is woefully under-powered (i.e., it is designed for 220V and is being used on a 110V outlet) and is most likely just not hot enough. That possibility was raised many posts ago. It seems futile to proceed with this matter until a properly heated soldering iron is used.

John

 

Take a small blob of flux and try to melt it.But I think that soldering iron is working at 15W~ which should be enough for soldering smaller stuff.

 

I believe the label on the TS's box is simply a victim of translation. It is most likely very dried our rosin or another organic type of electronic flux that is dried out.

What baffles me is the reluctance of the TS to address the fact that his soldering iron is woefully under-powered (i.e., it is designed for 220V and is being used on a 110V outlet) and is most likely just not hot enough. That possibility was raised many posts ago. It seems futile to proceed with this matter until a properly heated soldering iron is used.

John

I responded the iron not being hot enough. For one it does melt the solder wire it came with without problem. Two, another keyboard had the same problem with hard to melt solder joint, even while using a larger iron from radioshack, so am not completely sure that the iron isn't hot enough. It would seem at the size it is that it should be adquate for such jobs. The seller said that the flux will melt at above 110 °, and that I need to heat the iron to 200 °, implying that I can do that. But when I tried I remember it rather kinda burnt rather than melted the flux, other than a hole the size of the iron tip. Have recently asked them exactly how hot the iron gets, and am waiting for their reply, will report back.

As for the pic the solder box was shown so that the type in English would be readable.

So since the iron only melted a hole in the flux, and it's very brittle and difficult to extract a desired amount, I didn't want to try it on the pcb.

 

Take ohms law, V=IR
If the voltage is halved (running a 220V iron on 110V), then either the current is halved or the resistance is halved. But we are using the same device, so resistance remans constant. Hence running on the lower voltage draws 1/2 the current.
Power is I squared R. Under the lower voltage, power is (1/2I) R. Or 1/4 I squared R.

Basically, when running on 110V, this iron is only producing at most 1/4 of its power.