Overview

This is not your "jellybean" soldering station that you might find practically everywhere on the internet and even at your local stores, this is the product of a necessity we had to be able to do on-site soldering. We work a lot on the field, doing repairs and installations which involves a lot of soldering, usually preparing high power connectors with a lot of thermal mass and making minor repairs on systems that might have a lot of soldered connections.

While doing this we encountered a few problems. First of all, any good quality soldering station weighs a lot because of the big power transformer inside it, which makes carrying it on a work bag quite a chore, also since they are mains-powered and usually single voltage you have to rely on having an adequate wall outlet near you, which is not usually the case and you might have to use a long extension cord or even an autotransformer if your jobsite doesn’t have the correct voltage available.

Because of the constant struggle we had to deal with and the fact that the “solutions” to the problem were in fact just remedying the symptoms, not the cause, we decided it was time to build an actual portable soldering station that could easily be carried anywhere, weighing very little, having a small footprint, and able to be powered from a battery or a universal supply. This is when the PortaStation was born! Ticking every objective to become the solution to this problem, and not just that, but also able to be used at the bench on the lab as your main, every day, soldering station while still being easy to pack up and taken to the field. Weighing just 340g, powered from a 24V, 4A capable, power source, compatible with any Hakko 907 style soldering irons and sporting a beautiful graphic LCD, it is just a pleasure to work with.

With a minimalist and intuitive user interface it stays focused on the task at hand, giving you just the right amount of information being displayed at any given time, enabling you to monitor your power supply voltage in case you are running it from a battery and might risk damaging the cells if the voltage drops too low while keeping a close eye on your soldering temperature and how the power is being applied to the heater of your soldering iron.

If you want to change the set temperature you can either dial it in by rotating the knob on the front of the unit to a specific value or you can set your most commonly used temperatures in the settings and easily cycle through them by pushing on the same knob, making your life a lot easier and making you more productive.

The unit comes with a very simple and comprehensive menu system, with clear labels indicating each function. In the settings you can configure your favorite working temperatures, so they are quickly accessible while soldering, change the unit used if you prefer Celsius, Fahrenheit, or Kelvins (it’s ok, we won’t judge you), calibrate the unit if you feel like it’s out-of-spec, and a lot more settings that are coming with future firmware updates.

In summary, the PortaStation is a very powerful soldering station built from the ground up in the 21st century with quality components, assembled and tested by our hands, packing a lot of functionality in a small footprint, weighing very little, and perfect for being used on the lab bench or taken to a jobsite.

Technical Details

Documentation

• Schematic Diagram
• PCB Overview
• User's Guide
• More documentation, including the source code and binaries can be found in our website

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