with the misuse of my soldering iron and consequent breakage of the hanlde
I looked to ebay for a replacement unit... chinese knock offs abound and I found this one:
NZ$140 delivered, so took a gamble..
results(sorry for the copy and paste from fsb, but figured there may be someone interested here too):
it's defo made to a budget.
the rework station works fine, but the smallest nozzle is slightly askew due to the way it was attached.. doesn't affect performance at all. has a neat feature that if it's in the cradle it doesn't blow.. at least initially.... if ya take it out for the cradle it starts blowing, but doesn't switch off again when back in cradle.. odd.
the iron. it works fine enough.. doesn't have the weight that my other one has and therefore the cable 'feels' heavier than the handle/iron itself which feels a lil 'wrong' .. the tip is plenty fine, and heats up fast. looks like hakko style tips so replacements should be sweet.
it's just not as nice as my other one to use, but I'll prolly make it my primary unit purely cos it has the extra features.
shrank some heatshroink with the rework station and it worked a treat for that.
overall, it's no $400+ weller or hakko unit, but then it's not a $400 price tag. good bang for buck I reckon.
certainly a great starter tool set.
would I buy again? yup. fine for a bloke of my skills.