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Hi this is Toby with HMC Electronics. We're going to be taking a look at the Metcal MX-5241.
You may be familiar with the Metcal MX-5041; you may be familiar with its predecessor,
MX-500TS-11. On both of those systems, only one port could be powered at the same time.
On the MX-500TS-11, that output was 40 watts per channel, and only one channel could be
powered. When we moved over to the MX-5041, it was up to 80 watts per channel, but again
only one channel could be powered at any one time.
On the 5241, you've got the same great output--80 watts per channel--but both ports can be powered
simultaneously.
Let's take a quick look at the hand pieces, and then we'll go over to the power meter.
You're probably familiar with Metcal's MX-RM3E, which is their standard soldering pencil.
There's a slight bit of a glitzy upgrade on this unit here. It still takes all of the
STTC series tips. It comes with the hot pad tip remover because you just plug and play
your soldering tips.
One of the things that they did do on the new hand piece design is it has a removable
grip. So you've got one grip--actually two grips that are included. One of these black
ribbed grips, and then you've this textured, kind of knobly, green grips. Think about a
RoHS environment, it's a very easy way to signify that this is only to be used on RoHS
solder. It just kind of screws in, and they're replaceable and inexpensive to replace.
Now on to the precision tweezers. You may have used in the past the Metcal talon, the
MX Talon with its TAT-series tips. Metcal did a great upgrade on what was already a
great hand piece when they did the precision tweezers. Again, it has a really, really small
grip, a very compact design. They have a little locking switch here, so you can either have
the full range of motion or if you're working on something very small, like an 0201 device,
simply push that tweezer grip up and it's going to limit how far that tweezer action
is going to tweeze; how far it will actually open. So you're doing a very, very small movement.
The adjustments, if you can see here, you've got two collars on the hand piece. One of
these collars, when adjusted, adjusts the vertical height of the tip. The other collar,
when adjusted, controls the orientation of the tip in kind of a small circular motion.
And this is so that you can very easily line up these two tips. And to tell you the truth,
when I was plugging in the PTTC-701--very, very small tips--it took me only a moment
to get the tips absolutely perfectly aligned with this method.
One of the other things that's worth noting is your talon tips, the TATC-series tips.
There are about $110 to $120. But these generally are about $70. So you've got a massive cost
savings in moving over to the PTTC tips in the new MX-PTZ, which is the standard hand
piece for the 5200 series.
Right there I did mention the new tweezer hand piece. If you have the old MX talon or
any of the older hand pieces for the MX-500 series or 5000 series, they are fully compatible
with this station. So if your floor has MX talons, or you've got an inventory of TATC
series tips and you're fine staying in that grouping of product and maybe you're wanting
to hold off moving to the new hand pieces, you can plug that into this system and it
will automatically recognize it and you're good to go.
Moving on to the tower itself. The MX-5200, like the MX-5000, has the integrated power
meter. We're going to fire it up right now and we'll show you what this little toggle
button here does as far as going through your channels.
So you're going to notice that there is this square here, if you can see that. That is
indicating that this is the channel that is powered currently. You can then press it again,
and you are now powering both of these channels--both channels are powered. And then you can switch
so that you're only powering one channel.
You also will get, with this system, its tip saver hand pieces. What this means is as soon
as I take it out it will ramp up to power. It will be up at power in about two seconds,
three seconds, right there. As soon as I put it back in it all of a sudden powers down.
On this unit here (talon hand piece), power up the channel up to full, and it will be
up at full power--a little bit longer for the tweezer, but not so much longer. And once
that is fully powered, again, put it into its rest and it's off.
If you do have any questions on the Metcal MX-5241 or any of the MX-5000, 5200, or 500-series
systems, please feel free to give us a call or drop us an email.
Thanks for watching and happy soldering!