Today I was looking at measuring the current draw of the heat element of my Rework station .. I thought it would be a cool project for a little amp measuring tool inside a small project box...I think it would cool idea and you don't have to worry about blowing high end fuses or blow your meter up ..
What's your thoughts ???

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-Amm...076?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20ef442d0c

 

If your rework station includes a heat control (BTW: Soldering iron or hot air gun?) temperature control you might want to measure the true RMS current instead of the average current, which is the easiest to measure.

If your heat control cycles on and off, then you would probably want to find a way to average over a very long period of time.

 

If your rework station includes a heat control (BTW: Soldering iron or hot air gun?) temperature control you might want to measure the true RMS current instead of the average current, which is the easiest to measure.

If your heat control cycles on and off, then you would probably want to find a way to average over a very long period of time.

Oh sorry its a Analog Hot Air Rework station...
I am not sure how it works yet but its controlled by lm324 and I was plan on using my scope to plot it out and I was just using the amp measuring to see the min and max amp cause I am trying figure out the heat generated and what will be needed to cool the 2 Darlington transistors ...
The project was to a shunt box with plugs for easy useage and meter attachments and hopefully get a pretty good accuracy out of it too..

 

You can probably get a good enough idea of the current by just putting a low value resistor in series with the hot air gun and measuring the current with a digital voltmeter.

Remember to keep one hand in your back pocked when working around mains voltages.