Portable Soldering Station

2022-05-29 | By bekathwia

License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3D Printing

Bring your serious soldering skills with you on the go! This project shows you how to put together the ultimate portable soldering station, which turns a universal stand into a container holding everything you need to work on your project. The USB-C iron can be powered by a beefy battery pack for the utmost portability. Watch the video to see it come together and then pick up supplies to build your own!

Here are the specific items I used to build this project.

TS80P mini soldering iron with USB-C cable
Large-capacity USB-C battery pack
Soldering iron stand with brass sponge
3D printer and PLA filament
Small solder spool
Solder wick

trace around the stand

First, I traced the stand's perimeter onto a piece of paper and scanned it into the computer, where I traced it in Adobe Illustrator. The pen tool is pretty easy to use if you understand how it works. Named after the French engineer Pierre Bezier who popularized its use, the bezier line tool creates a path made up of control points that mathematically describe its curves, in Illustrator's case it's these tangent lines that have two of their own control points. So you can trace a curved path by clicking along it and dragging the tangent line to adjust. And you don't need to get it perfect the first time around, you can use the direct select tool and the pen tool's options to fine-tune the path.

trace in illustrator

I then saved the path as an SVG file and imported it into TinkerCAD, where I did the rest of the modeling. You can download it as-is or make your own modifications to my original file.

checking that everything fits

To allow the bottom straps to fold without breaking, it's important to rotate it in the slicer until the bottom layer lines are parallel to the straps. I printed it in PLA filament on my Creality CR10s Pro. As usual, it took me a few tries to get everything just right: a post that holds the solder in just the right spot, and clips that hold the parts of the iron without breaking.

portable soldering

This is the TS80P smart soldering iron. It's super tiny but packs a ton of features. It's got a little OLED screen, adjustable temperature, customizable firmware, and comes apart to get even tinier, which is why I picked it for this project. You need to power it with USB-C, either with an AC adapter or a beefy backup battery.

compact portable soldering station

A USB cable can fit in the remaining space. A rubber band holds the top of the triangles together. I think this is super useful for fixing any electronics project in the field, working on vehicle wiring, or for traveling. Or maybe you want to make this your main soldering stand and use it to keep your supplies organized.

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