This is a placeholder topic for “PINECIL - Smart Mini Portable Soldering Iron” comments.
The Pinecil is a smart mini portable soldering iron with a 32-bit RISC-V SoC…
Read moreHowdy. Do you recommend a particular power supply and silicone (or other heat resistant) cable for the pinecil? Cheers Richard
Hi @Richard139842,
We don’t have an official recommendation for the power supply but the Dual Output USB-C QC3.0 or the 12V DC 5A Fixed Tip would work well.
We have heat-resistant wire available to make up your own cable but it is only rated to 200°C which won’t be too helpful with +300°C iron.
I have a similar (not the same) iron. If it is like mine, it will work from 12V but will only do fine work, doesn’t have enough grunt to solder two reasonable size multi strand wires together (like normal power cable wires - not that I’m recommending soldering power cables, just illustrating the size of wire). I run mine from a surplus 19V laptop power supply and that’s good enough for most work. I have an old 75W mains iron that handles heavier stuff but has no temperature control. The cable to the iron is nothing special, just what was on the laptop supply with a barrel connector. It is a nice iron to use. With 19V it takes longer than 6 seconds to get to 300C, maybe 12.
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Some good advice from @Alan73922.
Keep in mind when choosing a power supply that the DC port on this iron is expecting 12-24V and will draw up to 3A so make sure your chosen power supply is within that range.
I’m curious as to what the 32-bit RISC-V SoC is actually doing in this device? Is it just doing temperature management? Can you connect to it and get statistics about power draw and temperature to know for sure whether you need a beefier power supply?
How much smarts does a soldering iron need?
Hi @Politas
The microcontroller in the soldering iron would be controlling the temperature of the soldering iron, as well as running the display and also monitoring the onboard IMU for the auto standby functions.
While you don’t necessarily need any of these things, they are definitely nice quality of life additions that add to the experience of using the iron.
Why is the Pinecil more than 200% the price versus sourcing from the original manufacturer? Including shipping it is even more of a rip off…?
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Hi there, @Chloe210424, and welcome to the forums.
We always lead with our best foot forward with pricing, so the prices and availability that are listed on the website are generally the best we can do after we get them through our suppliers.
It is also worth noting that the Sparkfun website lists its products in USD, while we use AUD. The current conversion rate is 1.55.
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Thank you Jane for your speedy response. I appreciate the warm welcome as well.
I understand that you have to source through suppliers and that it is USD. However the new and improved V2 can be directly purchased for 35.99 USD RRP (or even cheaper at 25.99 community price), which is 55.78 AUD by your conversion rate. Their shipping is 11.99 USD, 18.58 AUD. In total, 74.37 AUD.
Core Electronics’ price at this moment is 159.95 AUD, 6.95 AUD shipping, 166.90 AUD TOTAL. This is 224.42% of PINE64’s price. You also only stock the original, not the V2.
If you compare product without shipping, it is 286.73% of the price.
Just to raise awareness to potential buyers.
Thanks.
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Hey Chloe,
Appreciate your concern here. I think there is a bit of a mix-up here, though, as we don’t currently have supply from PINE64 themselves (though we wouldn’t say no to them reaching out for that purpose). This Item is through an alternate supplier of this product, who is an American company. So the unfortunate side effect of this is that it ships from PINE64 (a Chinese company) to Sparkfun (Colorado, USA) to Australia. It is affected by shipping and, most importantly, Tariff pricing along that route.
Prior to the 15th of April this year, the Pinecil was $84.25 in our range, but on that date, we saw a jump to $164.95 due to Tariff changes in the US.
While we are a business and need to make money (We here at Core Electronics need to buy the odd ESP32 and BME280 on occasion), the cost of this product has moved with supply and our margin has remained the same between early April and now; it has just been increased due to supply issues.
Cheers,
Blayden
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