TS100 Portable Soldering Station

Unfortunately i haven’t had a lot of time for home projects recently with work and other commitments but with the current situation i had more free time and finally had to time to work on projects which i enjoy !

I have found myself sometimes using my TS100 soldering away from the bench and one day i was watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uGS11yuVyo where Adam Savage from Tested made a portable Ts100 Soldering Iron powered by a Dewalt power tool battery. This was a great project but i wanted something more compact without all the storage.

I remembered seeing Ryobi made a nice compact soldering station online : Amazon link, This is more what I was after but needed to work with makia G serries.

The finished project :

Parts list

• Ts-100 soldering iron – Amazon
• DC jacks 5.5mm x 2.5mm – eBay
• DC jack sockets QTY 2 – ebay
• Silicone cable – ebay
• Antex soldering iron stand – Amazon
• Power battery holder (3d printed thingiverse)
• Makita Battery Terminal 6438441- Ebay

Stand

I Found a stand from my very first soldering iron that was perfect for holding the TS100 iron. This was simply glued to the top of the new 3d printed enclosure. Although the stand is too long and over hangs the whole assembly it is very stable a does not move during use. Note replacement sponge not received yet.

The Right cable

Being used to more conventional soldering stations i really wanted to have a flexible silicone cable . I had a 4core cable from an old iron but this was way too big to fit in the barrel jack connectors . After a bit of research i found a 2core silicone cable perfect for the job. This was rated at 4A but after testing i found the Ts100 only seemed to peek around 2.5A briefly during warmup when using a 18v supply.

Operating without battery Provision

I decided to add an extra DC barrel jack socket to allow a mains adapter to power the iron but the primary use would be battery power. Of course you can just plug a power supply jack straight into the Ts100 iron . Although using my solution this adds a power switch and a heatproof flexible cable. The fail safe works as follows , When inserting a power jack the circuit the Battery Gnd is disconnected from circuit preventing any damage should a battery accidentally being fitted at the same time.

Making the battery holder

Unfortunately having previously invested in the 18v Makita G series, there is not a big range and no 3rd party Usb chargers available unlike the popular LXT range. I noticed some people just add simply add DC jack on the side of the usb charger to plug 18v soldering iron in. In one of my previous projects , i designed and 3d printed a battery holder for a Makita G serries and had spare holder leftover so I ended up just designing and printed a separate enclosure to house everything. The new enclosure simply screwed to the back of the 3d battery holder.

Wring everything up..

The Image below shows every connected up , I added a fuse to be on the cautious side.

This project went very well and has been very useful and is made with alot of parts I already had which was great . The only thing i would like to change is have a shorter Iron stand so there is no overhang this is purely a minor ascetic as it feels stable when using with and without the battery fitted.

Thanks for stopping by and stay safe in these challenging times .

Luke