hot air rework station

The stickiness of the flux from a flux pen is enough. You can't be too enthusiastic about turning the fan up if you're using the reflow station, particularly with small parts.

Well.. they sell you the same crap in the shop around the corner for at least 3 times more. Better get it from the source directly for a good price.

Nice thanks, Does your flux pen use a water soluble flux? I use those too, but I'm always afraid if there is any high impedance around.

George H.

OK it's a very interesting question. How do you choose your vendors? It's rarely that I do it by price alone. This is a one time buy, the extra $50, is almost lost in the noise. But I do like the idea of supporting sparkfun, I like digikey too, (and I probably send a lot more than $50 a year their way.. )

I can think of lots of other examples, where I picked a vendor charging more, because (I felt) I was getting more. (The more is mostly a long term relationship... perhaps that is rarer these days.)

George H.

The Ebay feedback system. Read some of the negative feedback. If most of it is the usually nonsense (I'm just too stupid to know what I buy) then it's all good. I have some Chinese Ebay vendors from which I buy repeatedly but most of the times I just sort by price and thats it.

What do you need a long term relationship for? It the cheap stuff gets broken it can't be repaired economically and the profit margins are to low for any real service. For the price Sparkfun charges you can buy 2 Atten 858D+ so you have one spare!

It's rosin flux. The writing's mostly worn off but it's by Kester and I can make out that it says "Rosin Flux". I can't make out any part number, though.

It's not water based -- it's in some sort of mild solvent; when I paint it on the residue that's left after drying is slightly liquid and (lucky for me) slightly sticky.

OK maybe one of these,

George H.

For one of's that may work. I want to buy 100 of something, and then a year later buy another 100 of the same thing. I've had issues with things from ebay and amazon. It's just not worth the hassle to me to buy production volume things from them. I am registered on Ali baba, where we have bought some stuff.

Oh, I'm not talking about a long term relationship with sparkfun... but with other vendors. We buy all sorts of things, electronics is probably the least expensive. To me opamps are almost free as far as the total cost of something.

An example. We buy these big (2" diam) custom interference filters. They have to block the 780 nm line of Rb and let the 795 nm line through. Several years ago our old vendor Intor raised the price by some large amount. twice as much or something like that. It was decided I would go looking for a new vendor. I was getting quotes and talking specifics with a few of the big optics houses, (I don't recall whom) and also this little place, Custom Scientific. Custom scientific was a bit more money than the big houses, but I was talking right to the engineer/ scientist... That helped a lot. There were some secondary specs, that we wanted (but didn't need) I was able to work all that out talking directly to the guy. With the big places I was talking to the sales guy, who tlaked to the engineer, who told the sales guy something , who told me... The feedback loop was too slow :^)

George H.

Orcourse for that sort of things Ebay, Aliexpress aren't the most reliable source. We where talking about a hot-air station though.

I'm all for that as well when it comes to parts and materials I need for production runs. I try to maintain long term reliationships with suppliers and assembly houses so I know their quirks and what makes them tick. However some suppliers are so hard to work with that their slightly lower price doesn't compensate for their Kafka-esque ways.

If that's not The One it's pretty close.

Well, it _is_ tree sap.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

By the way, George, I would like to hear from you when you try it out. You are the only other person I have met who has one. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

John