Gadget Review: Coldheat Soldering Pen

I am sure by now we have all "seen on TV" this device that would heat up, solder on immediate contact then cool so fast you couldn't burn yourself with it and would average 700 soldered joints per 4 pack of AA batteries. Pretty high claims, which as it turns out are close enough to accurate provided you don't investigate further. Coldheat does not itself make any heat whatsoever. Instead it conducts (word choice intended) a current through whatever material it's work tip is brought into contact with. The material must allow electrical current to pass or nothing will happen. The tip is composed of highly fragile, parallel carbon rods separated by a non-contuctive heat resistant material. Press too hard trying to get the tip to "dig in" and you chip the tip making your job even harder, tips are currently $10. Once electrons flow, the material bridging the space between the two carbon rods essentially becomes a resistance heater. Carbon conducts heat poorly so, again, provided the tip is only in contact with the point of work for the second or two required to melt solder you can indeed touch it immediately afterward and it is merely warm. Again, provided you use the tool only, and exactly, as the manufacturer says it works as specified. Note my language choice.

I cannot in clear conscience give this product anything less than a thumbs down. This tool did not survive the first project I put it to.

The project: Replace 12 LEDs on a PCB in a battery operated desk light. The steps are simple: desolder the leads on a LED, remove and repeat, then solder in the 12 replacements, test and return to service.

Problems encountered:

• Desoldering braid would make the job much neater and easier.
• Coldheat is not intended to be used for the length of time to apply desoldering braid, nor can sufficient pressure be used without damaging the tip.
• The insulating material between the carbon halves melted on the fifth LED.
• The plastic material that houses the contacts began to soften and had to be reshaped while still malleable.
• The tip had to be reshaped (a minor hack) with emery cloth multiple times.
• The handle also became warm, because the batteries inside the handle became warm with use.
• Accidentally contacting both leads on an LED lit all the remaining LEDs in the circuit.
• Arcing between the tip and the work seemed too common to be comfortable around things like static sensitive ICs.

The hacks required to keep the tool operational to see the project done:

• Shaping the soft carbon tip: the stock bevel tip looks a lot like the graphite leads in a drafting compass to me, so I treated it as such. Worn and chipped is useless anyway and was quickly renewed in a few seconds on fine emery cloth. I also rounded some of the edges to prevent chipping. It still chipped and wore but it took longer. The insulating material in the center is harder and an air gap has to be maintained. I did not have the tools to do this available to me, I was just trying to stretch the life of the tip. Then it melted.
• Using the pen upside down so the pilot light was on top. Unfortunately it meant the red contact light was on the bottom, but I could see it illuminate by glancing into my palm and looking for the glow. Note this also placed the bevel in an upper position. It is not transferring heat, only current like motor brushes so contact just has to be maintained. After using the pen in both orientations it did not seem to effect operation in the slightest.
• Power failure not due to battery life. I was using 2600mAh NiMH cells which although getting warm after several uses still tested fine on the charger. (I have a multifunction charger with LCD display) Batteries getting warm tells me the tool is drawing plenty of current. On troubleshooting the pilot light and/or heating indicator would flash on while manipulating the power switch. On disassembly to investigate the power switch I found that was indeed the problem and perhaps the tool's Achilles heel. The power switch is a sub mini SPDT and on research for similar I found a Radio Shack repair part 275-007 which is a DPDT. It's rating is 6VDC .3A and this is a problem. I did in fact take the Coldheat's switch apart and verified the burned contacts and partially melted plastic. I can easily believe it to have a similar rating to the Radio Shack part, and if that is the case then it should at MAX have 300mA passing through it. The switch is located between one side of the battery box and one side of the tip. Soldering is in effect a full short of the battery pack and passing it through a switch with a rating a small fraction of the available power is ludicrous. I removed the switch, soldered (yes, I got out another soldering iron to fix the soldering iron . . .) the wire straight from the battery pack to the tip terminal, reinstalled the batteries and immediately test melted solder with it as before. I just no longer had a power switch and would have to remove the batteries to turn it off.

My Verdict: The Coldheat cordless soldering pen, while on paper beats out traditional soldering irons, is in reality of such excruciatingly limited usefulness that it has no place on any serious repairman's workbench. That said, it is still a highly efficient tool for exactly what it is designed for: infrequent light soldering. No review that I have read said anything about battery life, so to me and because of direct experience, this may be it's one Pro. Just moved your stereo and need to tin a speaker wires in the far corners of a room, OK. Need to R/R a part on a PCB, OK. Need to R/R a half dozen parts on a PCB or put together a small project kit, NO, get out your regular plug in soldering iron. Sorry Coldheat, you're a nifty gadget but you need to have certain key flaws redesigned.

Beverage Review: Pacific Chai

Ah, a hot caffeinated drink on a cold day and I'm in a mood for something besides coffee and something more inspiring than hot chocolate. Enter the world of instant chai latte. More than "plain leaves boiled in water" chai contains in addition to black tea various spices that would not be out of place in a pumpkin pie. Simply the whole spices are put into hot water, allowed to steep, then sweetened with honey and milk is then added. Not so with the instant powder chai. Put hot water in a heat resistant container, add powder, stir, drink, repeat as desired. Just like making instant hot chocolate.

I have sampled both Pacific Chai's Vanilla Chai Latte and Spice Chai Latte. I made them with tap water softened with a RainSoft system and the water was heated in a Panasonic NC-EM22P (yes half the words on it are in Japanese) set for 185° F. I used standard level tablespoon measures, ceramic mugs and a battery powered mini mixer. There are alternatives to plain water that the chai could be made with. I focused on easy and basic, thus I only had them with hot water.

With the mini mixer the chai powder blended readily and by holding the business end near the surface I could make it cavitate and the chai would develop a thin layer of foam. Depending if I followed label recommendations, or added an extra tablespoon, this foam layer could be made thicker. At higher amounts of powder there were more dregs at the bottom of the mug, mostly the spices that were not held in suspension. This seems to be pretty normal and I considered it a leg up on the next mug of chai, as the same thing happens even with instant hot cocoa.

In flavor think pumpkin or apple pie, a la mode, fresh baked but without the crust or pumpkin or apple with a vague black tea undertone. In mouthfeel it is closer to hot cocoa than coffee with creamer. It is substantial without being too heavy, imparting the sense that you actually drank something that will sustain you for a bit. The Vanilla Latte flavor was softer than the Spice Latte which is as it should be. Personal preference will determine which someone would like. If you like spice flavors go with the spice, and if you prefer things more like say french vanilla creamer I would be able to say the Vanilla Latte takes the edge off the usually strong spice notes.

I do not place the caffeine content in the same realms of coffee unless you give the dose a bump. It does after all have a tea base which has to work pretty hard to catch up. The 10 ounce cans I bought claim 13 servings, however other sites say 8 and claim 100mg caffeine. This may be accurate as 13*2TB=26TB per can, 26TB/8=3.25TB per serving or three slightly rounded tablespoons. I could see that being possible for admission to the 100+ club.

So if you want something other than plain old coffee, and need more kick than hot cocoa, Pacific Chai does deliver the goods. If you are a caffeine fiend and need to mellow out at the end of the day, make it as recommended on the can. While not high octane in the caffeine department, it still packs more ammo than regular tea. Look for it almost anywhere normal tea is sold, yes I mean a real walk in store. Or you could buy it here from the safety of your workstation.

Gadget Review: Micro Spy Remote

This little device is a key fob size infrared television universal remote. About the size of many car alarm arm/disarm remotes it is easily palmed surreptitiously. While it comes with little in the way of instructions, they really are not needed anyway as the device is very simple. Installing the battery can be a challenge but rudimentary puzzle solving and observation skills will point the way. The battery tray is removed by sliding the spring loaded latch towards the center of the remote while simultaneously pulling the tray out with a thumbnail. There is a lip in the bottom of the tray and remember button batteries have a rim, it will only sit flush one way. There are no +/- markings. There are no LEDs to tell you it's working.

Now I purchased this little gadget to turn off those televisions that were not mine which I found particularly annoying. So off to WalMart I went to sow a little anarchy. Press and hold the mute button for five seconds and the remote starts sending mute codes out. Tap it once when the television mutes and then all the buttons have the needed codes to work the television. Big red power button on top and a Sony widescreen turned off. Repeat on a Pioneer and Samsung. Remember that many store display televisions have managerial settings that will not allow channel changes or otherwise severely limit the functionality of the unit, but they can always be turned off. This is all I want, mash the red button and flashing annoying brainwashing devices go silent so I can concentrate on other things.

To recap: It's a key chain size auto scanning television remote with basic functions which can be used for good or evil.

I got mine at Micro Spy Remote on ThinkGeek

Reinventing myself or is it a recursive update?

It was 1980 something when my father came home with that Apple, green monochrome display, dual 5.25" floppy drive and 9 pin matrix printer. Two years later (or thereabouts) the mouse was invented and we got one with a program called Mousepaint. Broderbund developed PrintShop about the same time. Wargames was a box office hit and I was immediately forbidden from ever thinking about getting a modem. Then CompuServe and GEnie came along and I was devouring my monthly COMPUTE! magazine, typing in BASIC programs as fast as I could. I blew by my peers in keyboarding and computers classes in middle school. I was wearing out ATARI joysticks until a bad report card came along and it disappeared. Then I found out about Nintendo and Mario, Castlevania and others when we visited Grandparents in NY. On the other side of the mountains, it was a C64 with a tape drive. By now I was experimenting with programming directly in hexadecimal machine assembly. Then suddenly I wasn't cool. I wasn't a jock, I wasn't a prep (though all my classes were college prep level) I was a puzzle piece that didn't go with what was in the box. That persisted for the rest of my public school career. At least most of my teachers understood.

Fast forward and I dropped $3000 on my own first computer, a fully state of the art Tandy running Windows 3.1 and MSDOS5.0. Microsoft Works supplanted Appleworks and none of my BASIC worked in QBASIC. The architecture was completely alien and derailed me totally in programming. I was lost and demoted to lowly user. Skip more years and the Tandy no longer had it's original CPU, there was a 100mhz overclock chip, the RAM was maxed out to 32meg and I convinced the BIOS to read a hard drive that was almost 2gig. It ran Win95, the 5.25 floppy bay had been exchanged for a used 12x CDROM, a 1x external parallel port CD burner was added and an external 56K data/fax modem. It ran AOL3.0 and AOL4.0 and I started to hear about Linux. I ripped my first CD track by hacking the line out port of the CDROM to the line in port of my SoundBlasterPRO card and opening Sound Recorder.

Fifty bucks at a swap meet and a little patience later saw me running RedHat on a former IBM desktop fitted with 100meg of ram, a 16gig fireball hard drive and a MachZ overdrive CPU. AOL was ditched for freewwweb with PPP work-around to connect to the internet. For almost two years I didn't have to pay for internet connection. Amazon started selling books and I dropped coin on C++ manuals, downloaded compilers and learned how to really rip CDs and did my first Linux scripts to rip and code MP3s. Winamp was my friend. I switched from Pirch98 to XChat in Linux. I started kernel tweaking. That computer eventually went back to Win98 and then hit a dumpster this past January.

So where am I at?

Usually every two years my job falls apart and I wind up doing a 180 flip in the next job. I've been at Quad/Graphics in the pressroom for four years now. I have come to the conclusion I am running out of challenges, or the challenges to come are predictable. Life kicked me in the 'nards back in May, then June, then yet again in July.

I have a good position at work, but the times are changing. Chaos is a foe, that is certain, but at times things are revealed with a sudden clarity. There are a lot of benefits available to me at work. I am tied up with a debt management program for about the next five years. So where should I, or could I, be in two years? Four years? There is a brass ring within reach here.

So I had a brief talk with my "talent specialist" at work. He also happens to be the man that did my interview four years ago, and remembered me clearly. He is going to go to bat with me to talk with the bosses to get me scheduling work arounds so I can attend classes. Further, I am fully qualified for 100% tuition reimbursement (up to $4K per year, $15K lifetime benefit) I just have to maintain a B average or better and pay for the course up front.

Here's my plan: he's going to put together a list of classes for me to look through starting in the spring semester. I also qualify for a scale pay rate increase which at this point I absolutely need to survive and keep a roof over my head. It's a helluva chance, I don't even have my own place anymore. There's no guarantee I'll get the raise. I'm owed it, I deserve it, I've worked for it and by all rights should get it. Further I do have a learning disability, there is only one way I pick up things, but then again, once I've hit the EUREKA! stage it's never completely forgotten either. Can I swing B averages in college level classes after having been out of school for 18 years? Only one way to find out. Hang on, it's likely going to be a wild ride. To do what I'd like to I need a 4 year degree. That's right, it's a big brass ring. Four years of ugly then suddenly debt free and with the potential to upgrade the job making TWICE or THRICE what I make now.

Talk about jumping in with both feet eh?

Candy Review: Chargers

Chargers are candy coated chocolate covered espresso roasted coffee beans. Think M&M peanut but with a whole coffee bean in the middle instead of a peanut. The candy coating is a little thicker than the M&M and the chocolate to coffee ratio is just about perfect. The chocolate is not lacking in strength, in fact I snacked on a little Hershey's Dark for a comparison. The Chargers competed well, and picked my caffeine level back up since I waited a few hours since my last fix. Most other reviews I see about this product say just a few pieces equals out to a cup of coffee, but we all know how poor a standard that is with it's wide variation. Are we talking 2am truck stop coffee strength or stuff you can actually see through? Further there is a variation whenever you talk organics, each bean is unique and will have a different amount. Remember that, and just don't be too disappointed if you don't get the kick in the pants you want. I see some similar products claim about 20mg per bean which seems to me to be a little high for the Chargers as I ate the whole package which would be 300mg caffeine if I used that formula. Personally it feels like half that. This is a case where YMMV. The package they come in is also cool, it's patterned after a standard D cell battery, though in placing the two side by side, the D cell is a bit bigger in diameter. It is still effective camouflage.

To recap:

• Chocolate + coffee = flavor combo win
• Unstandardized natural caffeine = buzz fix show
• Crunch from candy coat + crunchy coffee bean = crunch win
• Cool stash box packaging = crush proof win
• Magnetic steel packaging = eco recycling win

Eat them because you like chocolate, coffee and crunchy things.

I bought mine from: Chargers on ThinkGeek

So it's 1am and I'm up to episode 12/12 of HGG

I haven't heard them in years and thought the CD the mp3s were on was lost to life's chaos. So it got loaded into iTunes and the ID3 tags fixed and played consecutively while I drank lots of caffeine and swapped batteries through my new charger, messed about on the internet and started cooking my lunches for the coming week.

Now I just need to get back into the swing of blogging. Real reports of life, lessons and the occasional cheatcode or product review. I've tried seven different caffeine products in the last week, and used three techno devices that I will eventually put up reviews for.

The past week is a big blur. 84 hours work in seven days. I think the only reason I got through it relatively unscathed was the candy I ordered from ThinkGeek, some of which actually says "nutritional supplement." It all contained caffeine, and I ate it very slowly using the trickle effect to just keep the energy up and motor through the hours. So now I'm basically trying to get a few things done before my overtime night (Thursday) while still feeling like I had a night off.

So I see this article on my News page

And it has been a long time since I played with blogging. So I figured WTH and since I already used Facebook, and didn't exactly microblog, why not get back to the basics. I really should keep a journal of some kind, and I think at this point in my life with the recent events (July is a month to forget) there aren't any more cans o' worms to be opened. The one thing this blog is not going to be dedicated towards is me, but it's going to be all about I. If I find something of interest or come up with one of life's cheatcodes, you bet there'll be a post. When the mood strikes, ie I'm buzzed up on caffeine and/or Jack Daniels there will likely be some pointless random long post one step away from uncontrolled chaos. I don't need a lectern to step up to and rant, I say my piece and move on when displeased, short and to the point. I was, however, told by an ex-coworker the one thing he missed was my rants because unlike so many others my opinion was carefully considered and I was willing to explore both sides of the argument while maintaining my stance until new data was available.

So there ya go. Simple enough, right? Now I must run, still have two more nights to get through to finish off my seven-on for shift rotation.