Low-cost soldering & desoldering station suitable surface mount components

I am an engineering student (at Sydney-Australia) working with surface mount components.I have acces to proper soldering station at uni. but I want to buy one for myself to work at home as well.

Can you recommend a particular brand-model-supplier for a soldering & desoldering station suitable surface mount components? (Please consider my limited student budget)

Mike

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Mike
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"Mike" wrote in news:42dcfa64$0$26199$ snipped-for-privacy@news.optusnet.com.au:

I would look for a used (or rebuilt) Hakko 926 or 936 ESD for soldering. I think the ESD models are Black. Desoldering stations are expensive. I would buy a hot air gun for this purpose. I have two Hakkos on my bench which works well for removing passives (one iron on each side).

The only thing I dislike about the Hakkos is that their chisel tips are not flat enough. One of my colleagues prefers Ungers for exactly this reason.

You also need to find a stereo microscope and boom. This will cost more than everything else. My guess is that everything will cost you about $1000 US for used equipment. I know this is a lot of money for a college student.

FWIW, I hired a newly minted engineer in part because he had good tech skills including soldering SMT components. In the job market, sometimes its what you can do outside the basics of your education that makes the difference.

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Al Clark
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Al Clark

I personaly like "Met-Cal" soldering stations. They heat up real fast, (ie < 30 seconds) and the tips can be changed easily. They are a bit spendy.

You could find a Weller soldering station for about $130-250 from

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The lower cost Weller soldering stations would be fine for a college student.

Eric

Reply to
Eric

Sorry just noticed that you wanted a desoldering station as well..... I'm not sure what program you are in, but a desoldering station is probably a poor investment for a college student.... a soldering station will make your life easier if you are building up alot of projects.

I'm not sure you will utilize a personal desoldering station much..... plus you can take off most surface mount parts with just a low cost ($100) heat gun.

Once you graduate and have a full time job, they will have equipment for you to use. so unless you are building up lots of projects at home, your desoldering station will just collect dust.

My 2cents

Eric

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Eric

Hako stations are locally available and easy to get spares for.

Think wes sells them

Suposed to be someone in Sydney carrying the xytronic stations but I haven't been able to find out who it is yet.

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I bought myself a 988D station , use it a lot. Tend to use one of the mini wave tips most of the time Can also use Hakko tips.

Links to US site with all tips for xytroniccs

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Soldering stations are usually to expensive for student budgets. Maybe lucky enough to get a student discount. I know the local Tektronix disributor gives a student/academic discount on cro's.

Maybe lucky to find something decent second hand, afaik no one local sells refurbished lower end stations.

A lot of distributors in Australia can be a real pain in the butt to deal with. They always want to know who you are working for etc

Reply to
Alex Gibson

For student get a good iron and look at Chipquik and SMD 2000 from

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and possibly a hot air gun.

The desoldering and resoldering kit even includes a hand vacuum pickup tool! Their kits are general from around 15 to 20 USD to 100 USD from Digikey CPC and other online and real world stores. Including Mektronics located in Victoria, Australia.

For a decent iron I use the JBC range AD2200 with replaceable tips that are kept at HALF power when on the stand and warm up in 2 seconds. The interchangeable tips come in various sizes down to 0.2mm conical great for TQFPs and the like. These appear to be available from Mektronics in Victoria for Australia.

JBC

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Mektronics

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
    PC Services
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Paul Carpenter

Hi

In 89C51 we are calling SPI(in biuld) inside the Int0 interrupt .. it return zero. But if use SPI funtion out of interrupt its working fine. Any one know about this. Please advice on this if you know...

Thanks

regards kannan

Mike wrote:

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Chidambaram Kannan

mount

I'm in the process of putting together a SMT rework station at home to support my hobby. The access I had at work with high end equipment for 16 years has stopped and I needed something for home. Get a used Metcal solder system. Easy tip change out and they heat up in about 15 seconds. Ebay has several new and used Metcals.If you cant swing it then I guess a low wattage weller will have to do. For the Stereoscope I picked up a new off brand Chinese unit from eBay. It was $200 which was in my budget and it did what I needed. I was supprised at the quality of the unit. I can solder each pin of a 48 pin TSOP with no problems.You can get used higher quality brands off of eBay but the condition will vary for about the same cost. Im happy with my purchase. I'm sure You can find a distributor closer to you.

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See my unit and pictures I made with a plain ole HP R707 camera pointing at one of the eye pieces. Turned out good!

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Next on my list is a Hako hot air unit.

Greg

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Greg Holdren

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