A couple days ago I spent some time desoldering several obsolete clad modules to the point that I wore the hallow tip out of my desoldering tool and I needed to order a replacement. I have seen these desoldering tools that use a plunger to suck the solder up and thought I would give one a try. This is a cheap $10 desoldering tool, so cheap it comes with free shipping! Surprisingly, it worked fairly well after all the smoked cleared burning off the newness. To use it, press the plunger in, put the desoldering tip over the solder joint you want removed and press the trigger button on the side. (black button) The solder gets sucked up into the tool. You can clear the removed solder by pressing the plunger repeatedly. You can find these all day long on eBay and places like Amazon. There are better units out there for around $30 but I wanted to see what this little guy could do first. Not bad, but I really won't know until I have to desolder several dozen joints. Prior to this I was using this typical desoldering tool with the suction bulb. Another cheap tool but it did the job. The worse thing about this tool is if you are desoldering dozens or even hundreds of joints, it can put a toll on your hand and fingers. But then again, I don't think desoldering tools are meant to desolder hundreds of joints at a time! If you have a favorite tool or something that you think we need to be aware of or possibly and to our tool boxes, please share in the CNCs & Cool Tools forum. I have a couple other cool tools I will be sharing with you over the next few weeks. That looks promising in deed! I use a solder sucker but it doesn’t work well because you have to hold it with one hand, steady on the board and at the same time heat the solder with the tool in the other hand. I’ve also seen some small heat gun type devices that can direct a small stream of hot air onto multiple solder joints at once to desolder say a connector block without having to suck the solder out. I’ve got lots of circuits that I’d like to desolder and reuse, think I’ll give this thing a go! I bought a solder rework station from ebay (Rework Station) It has a temperature controlled solder iron and a hot air blower, both capable of 480° C and a speed/flow control on the blower. The hot air makes short work of desoldering PCB’s, both THT and SMD, and I havent burnt a component yet! Jason, if you want to strip a few boards I can highly recommend a hot air blower. Place the board in a vice or PCB holder, heat it with the blower and SMD parts literally fall off and THT parts just pull out with a pair of tweezers. I used to do it with an iron and spring loaded solder sucker and the number of either boards or components I ruined is not good. It also makes soldering SMD components on to a PCB easy. Put a small dab of solder paste on each pad on the whole board,, no need to be too precise. Place the SMD’s in place (they dont even have to be straight), start the hot air blower on one corner of the board until the solder starts to melt then move around the whole board melting as you go. When the solder paste melts it turns shiny and draws back onto the pad and the component magically straigtens. It’s kind of fun to watch. There are plenty of videos online about this. Oh, I find 400° to be the right temperature for both the solder iron and hot air de-soldering.Desoldering tools
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#1 · October 27, 2022, 9:34 pm
#2 · October 27, 2022, 11:28 pm
Jason Hite
FlightDeckSoft
#3 · October 29, 2022, 2:34 am
2017-10-10