I appreciate the thoughtful reply. Yes, maybe not having to contort yourself to do everything with an 8-bit PIC is a nice upgrade in quality of life. I'm just a grumpy old man and grouse at putting the 32-bit mcu and screen forth as a top reason a soldering iron is good. Agree 100% on PID control, which my WES51 does pretty well and is still a good step above the dumb resistive heat firehoses.