Soldering Station Designed Around Batteries

Companies now are looking to secure revenue streams by sneakily locking customers into as many recurring services as possible. Subscription software, OS ecosystems, music streaming, and even food delivery companies all want to lock consumers in to these types of services. Battery-operated power tools are no different as there’s often a cycle of buying tools that fit one’s existing batteries, then buying replacement batteries, ad infinitum. As consumers we might prefer a more open standard but since this is not likely to happen any time soon, at least we can build our own tools that work with our power tool brand of choice like this battery-powered soldering station.

[Nelson] aka [wooddragon48] has a number of power tools and their associated batteries from a specific manufacturer, and while he’s a fan of this brand personally he’s looking to get a little bit more use out of these battery packs with this build. The soldering station is built around an inexpensive controller and wand which [Nelson] modeled in FreeCAD. With the model of the controller to work with, the next step was to design a 3D-printed enclosure for the controller which could snap on to one of his power tool batteries. A coiled wire-style wand holder is attached to the side and a recessed switch at the top rounds out the build to ensure that the soldering station isn’t accidentally switched on.

After a few prototypes the soldering station looks like it would fit right in with the other array of tools available for these battery packs. All of the CAD and 3D printing files are also available for anyone looking to build one of their own or his approach to designing other tools around these batteries. It certainly goes a long way to show that even though you might be somewhat locked in to a particular power tool brand, it’s at least possible to build other custom tools to make use of the batteries they work with. You can even use portable battery packs like this to power something like an ebike, too.