Been a big fan of these cheap and cheerful USB soldering irons since discovering them via @biglesp ... There's a couple of things with them, the first one is the well known fact that it's best to run them off a USB battery pack as otherwise they present a bit of current at the tip. This leads to the second thing that bugged me and I fixed! So the iron is designed to only heat the tip when the user has it in their hand.. it achieves this with a touch switch and also a motion detection system. The trouble is is that my USB power bank auto switches the power on and off when it detects a draw at the socket. This meant that I could plug the iron in and use it but if I put the iron on the stand and it timed out it would turn off but also wouldn't wake the USB supply when I retouched/moved the iron meaning I would have to pull the USB cable out and reinsert. So... I have modified it to be permanently on. The instructions are pretty straightforward.. remove the yellow wire to the touch switch that you can see in the top picture and then also remove the silver tube component (a small tube with a soft spring inside which acts as the movement detection switch). Finally you then need to bridge the 2 pads to close where the silver tube switch would have been (see picture below). Now your USB iron is always on!
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