Brian - I took the thing apart last night just see what kind of quality was used in the construction. It has a toroidal xfmr for what its worth. Didn't look too crappy inside. It has a button that allows you to see both the set temp ans well as the "actual" temp. As we speak, I have the set temp at 600F and am allowing it to warm up until the "actual" temp is pretty close to 600. Took ~1 minute for the "actual" to start floating around within a couple degrees of 600. Now I will dunk the tip (~.750 inches) in some water at ~45F and watch the "actual" temp reading. After about 30 seconds in the water, the "actual" reading only fell by about 5F, probably because the thermocouple, RTD, or whatever, is too far abouve the tip. The tip was clearly not at 500+F after a few seconds in the water. I will rip the thing apart again and try to figure out how it works, but the IC that runs the thing (maybe it just runs the display) is built right onto the board and encapsulated only with potting.