Hot Air station from Harbor Freight Plastic welder??

Trying to compare my Weller WRS3000. I have to use the lowest air flow of 10. 10 what I would have to look up, but its very small amount. I have to jack temp up to max usually to close to 1000 degrees to melt solder. I have not done much or had any success with this pen. I mostly use it to clean off boards and it prevents moisture build up when i blow off alcohol, but the fine tips controls the pattern so I have even melted glue sticks, or made some of my hot melt jobs pretty.

greg

I might get one of those HF units for other uses. I am also going to check if they have the resistor assortment case in the store.

greg

Last time I looked they only had the flat boxes. We bought them anyhow because we urgently needed somthing at that client (start-up, basically didn't have an electronics lab at that time).

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I think the answer is yes, maybe! I like this idea. I think I'm going to buy one of these to play with! My experience is that a single hot air pencil like this is not going to be too cool for SMD rework. The usual station with solder sucker and hot air is useful to a point but to REALLY suck the big chips off you have to heat ALL the leads at once. Going round and round with a pencil won't cut it.

But there are possibilities here! The way you'd use this on a small chip would be to first suck the excess solder off the leads and then use hot air to lift the leads on one side and then the other. When there are leads all the way around, however, you need to heat them all at once.

You might do that mounting 4 hot air pencils together or building a manifold to direct the hot air. The big machines I've used to remove SMDs had a pot load of manifolds in different shapes each to direct the air onto the leads of a given chip style. Usually a square tube surrounded by another square tube of a larger size where the hot air came down on the leads between the two tubes. To lift the SMD there was a silicone rubber suction cup activated with an air vacuum that sucked onto the top of the chip and supplied an upward force to lift it when the legs all melted. Totally effective. Totally slick! And Oh yeah, TOTALLY expensive!

I have been long wanting to put together a cheap homebrew version of one of these devices. And you've opened some real possibilities with this plastic welder thingie.

Yeah, may take some adapting, but I'm optimistic. In my experience air flow and temperature control isn't really all that critical so long as you keep in in a decent range to melt solder and remove the heat as soon as the part desolders. I think you are onto something here.

Benj

The temp and airflow would enable you to reflow the paste flow to build widgets and to soften large areas and non destructively remove as well! lloks like a winner! Not clear on one thing.. does it make itown air flow or do yu need a tank or compressed air supply. please have orogianl poster confirm whter it blows own air!

marc

...

I suppose you could, but places like MPJA (just a customer, and that was perhaps 10 years ago) have actual (if presumably somewhat cheesy, given the price - but you're look> But there are possibilities here! The way you'd use this on a small

I've been doing a bit of SMD rework with an iron - no 4-sided packages - just 0805s and SIPs. Desoldering actually impairs the process (with an iron) - with a good bit of solder everything can get fluid and the part can be moved - desoldering first makes it difficult to get the part hot (lousy contact) and causes it to cool off more quickly, so it sticks. Even with air, I'd expect desoldering to be irrelevant if the part can be heated all around.

I have been contemplating a hot air setup myself. If cooking it up as a project is the aim, why not seek out old/junk hair-dryers or toasters as cheap/free sources of nichrome wire and really roll your own - if buying parts, I'd expect that buying the $100 version would be cheaper as well as faster.

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Looks like it needs to be connected to an air system. I guess they assume that a real man's garage will contain the biggest honking compressor the neighborhood has seen. Red, at least a 5ft tall tank, and loud.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Other places (been looking for a "home unit" myself) to check are

(lots of Xytronic gear) (Aoyue) aka (Xytronic and rebranded Aoyue)

Pick up some Chip Quik. Worked like a dream for me on a 48 pin TQFP (0.5 mm pitch) with just an iron and good ol' Kester #44 paste. Even though it's relatively expensive stuff (US$8-ish per foot) it may be the way to go for onesie-twosie usage.

Yea, but mines older than I am :)

In any event, yes it needs an air pump. The original device came with a cheap (surprise) pressure regulator used to adjust the output air temp.

I'm thinking that I can rig one of the cheap fish-tank based diapharm pumps and regulate air flow with electronic circuit (as opposed to plugging air pump into wall outlet).

Once air flow can be electronicly regulated, I just need thermocouple and some type of SSR based temp controll circuit.

BTW, I almost purchased a real hot air stating, but looking at it (and already owning the useless harbor freight plastic welder) I figured what the heck? It's only going to get used to make projects, why not make a project out of the hot air gun :)

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Yes, of course! But not the wimpy noisy oilless type, a real man uses a (relatively) quiet 5HP or better, 240VAC two-stage oil compressor. I'm still smarting that I missed the local HD sale of a new display model 80-gallon Ingersoll Rand at 1/2 price. Far better than those $500 Sam's Club specials.

Of course the real man had better drain the tank regularly, or a photo of his house and what's left of him might show up in the local news when the tank finally rusts through-- there's a heck of a lot of energy stored in those tanks. I'm waiting to hear about injuries from all the cheap offshore $100 ones (including a nailer) being sold. I bet most people don't bother reading the manual. There's still enough energy in the little tanks to cause injury.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Of course real men keep their compressors in the workshop not the garage, and they have an automatic drain valve installed on the big one :-).

While even small compressor tanks store a fair bit of energy I have never heard of an injury caused by the fairly frequent occurrence of rust out. If the tanks are made to the applicable parts of the ASME pressure vessel code then the material is a relatively low strength, highly ductile steel not prone to brittle fracture. The usual failure starts out as a slow leak which will increase gradually until noticed.

Of course you may not have a lot of reason to assume that Chinese compressor tanks conform to code if you use the historical code conformance of other Chinese products as an indicator!

For the hot air soldering application a nitrogen tank with regulator would be the way to go for lead free. For regular old fashioned tin-lead I prefer a system based on a small centrifigual blower at lower pressure and higher flow rates than used by small hot air plastic welders. But the HF plastic welder should work fine within its size limitations if used appropriatly (preheat is essential, plop your board down on a pancake griddle for instance) and adequate temperature regulation should be possible with just an air pressure regulator and a variac or light dimmer, given some means of temp measurement.

Hi

Why on earth will I want to create such a crude device for soldering smt just go and pick up a cheap copy of hakko 850 and get heads that fit smd packages so that you do not blow surrounding cap off the board.

sells Aoyue 850A++ SMD Hot Air Rework Station at 100us and all the hakko nozzels fit the system

look also at the nozzels

Try use the

as paint stripper.

Arie

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