I still haven't spent the money to get a nice variable soldering iron for home use so I continue to make do with what I have or on the cheap. I'm getting really tired of no temp control so I thought of using a AC light dimmer to control it. A few short Googles later and sure enough someone else has already thought of this idea and tested it.
I went to my local home improvement store and got a dimmer, outlet and a box to mount it in.
I snipped the end off of an old PC power cable to use here.
Installed the dimmer and outlet.
Connected the ground from the cord and the ground from the dimmer to the terminal on the outlet.
Connected blue (neutral) to the outlet from the cord.
One of the black wires from the dimmer goes to the Hot on the outlet and the other goes to brown (hot) on the power cord. It's basically like an inline switch or pot. Don't let the AC trick you, this design is pretty much like DC!
Connected with a wire nut.
All assembled and ready to go! Now I just need a better knob and find what temperatures are where on the dial.
No comments:
Post a Comment