I repaired my sealing iron today

While I was sticking Oracover to my snowplane today, my iron suddenly stopped heating. I bought it only 2 years ago and with its LCD display, I tought it was the Dee Bee's or the bees knees. Surprisingly, the thing is not very tough.



I phoned the hobby shop to see what they've got, but the chap told he had one with a turning knob and also "a more expensive one with a LCD screen!!" . They're the sealing irons that are imported by Scientific France and are exactly the same as the one I have. So that wasn't a solution for me. I unscrewed the handle and looked at the electronic board but didn't find anything wrong with that: no burning smell or exploded components. Then I opened the iron itself to have a look at the resistance and at the same time, unearthed my multi meter. In order to measure the resistance, I unsoldered 1 wire off the print board.



I quickly found out that that the resistance was broken in one of the coils. When detected where exactly the break was, I lifted 2 wires of the coil with a needle and knotted them together with a copper strand from an electrical cable.







After a final test, I resoldered the wire again and assembled the whole lot.

This is something everybody can do. It saved me 55 EUR, diesel and a 2 hours drive!

Lieven