Where to find desoldering tools in the USA?

This

may be the least bad cheap option. They also carry the "regular" spring- loaded suckers.

Look around someplace like

for some real stations, though. Good home/hobby/proto-lab stations aren't terribly expensive and do make the work a lot easier.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

Sounds reasonable to me. Why didn't you just buy it?

Solder wick works better.

John

I'm frugal, plus it sells for the equivalent of $2 outside of the country...

Sounds like a good idea... will look into that.

Michael

Seems pricey to me. How about buying a bulb tho? mouser.com, p/n 384-1002, $2.79.

I have a couple of these and a push-down, and I like the bulb better.

Agreed tho the bulb is nice for when there's a huge blob of solder to clean up. Some people prefer the suction, I dunno, maybe I just don't know how to work the solder sucker right.

--
...Adam Di Carlo..........

Yeah, my dad has a suction bulb... but he's 75 miles away... thought I'd shop around at RadioShack or mouser.com, thanks for reminding me.

The going price on eBay seems to be US$5-6, including shipping (do a search on "solder sucker"). Obviously, your need is not very urgent, or you would have bought it from Fry's while you had the chance (what is your time and mileage worth to you?).

$13 for some push-down suction desoldering device.

Not especially urgent... was hoping to desolder a tiny transformer and capacitor from a dead rechargeable shaver for use in future experiments.

Fry's was on the way to Roseville last night so I stopped in to take a peek.

Thanks,

Michael

What does a plane ticket cost?

John

First, you don't need any fancy tools for a lot of desoldering. Most of them became common after circuit boards became common, where you needed to clean the holes when removing parts.

If two wires are soldered together, all you have to do is heat up the joint and then pull them apart. If there is a good mechanical bond, it may be difficult, but no desoldering tool is going to get all the solder out, so there will never be a time when you can just untwist the joint.

Solder suckers are great, for specific uses, and really do have a lot of suction power. I paid about ten dollars here in Canada over twenty years ago for mine, it still works fine and it was a good tool to have around. I actually bought it for one very specific desoldering task, and having it for that one task was worth buying it for, but of course I've had it to use for everything else ever since.

I don't find the bulbs particularly great. On the other hand, for about ten dollars, also twenty years ago, I bought at Radio Shack a desoldering iron, basically a soldering iron with a bulb attached to it. That too was a good purchase, it serves in different ways than the solder sucker, and has the advantage of the bulb attached to the iron so it is much easier to use than if they were too separate units. On the other hand, the soldering tip on that unit was not plated so it wore down fast, and oddly, for some years Radio Shack did not offer a replacement tip, even though the tip was replaceable. That later changed.

Solder wick is more for cleaning up joints and holes after parts have been removed or disconnected. For wires, one can just flick the heated wire and the solder will fall off, being careful to not let it land on bare skin, or fly into one's eyes. It can be very useful when repairing circuit boards, because no matter how good the suction of a solder sucker, there is often some solder left in the holes, and if you are putting parts back in, the solder wick cleans up the holes.

If you're just removing parts to use elsewhere, a solder sucker is good enough. Even then, if there aren't a lot of leads to the component, one can just heat up the joints on the circuit board and pull the component off. If there are more leads, one may have to rock the component, and of course move the soldering iron around the joints to get them all heated up. Use something as a lever under an IC, and one can get 8pin ICs off a circuit board just by heating the pins in sequence, though that's not so smart if you want to reuse the board (as when repairing the equipment and putting a new IC in to replace a failed one). It's doable with 14 or 16pin ICs, but it gets harder and risker, unless one has a better heat source to get multiple pins hot at the same time.

Michael

Here's a sneaky trick for stripping parts from boards (to be used only with adult supervision!):

Cover a suitable area of your benchtop with a sheet of wood (or whatever) to protect it. Wear safety goggles. Heat up each solder joint until it's molten, then SLAP the board onto the protected benchtop. The solder will be ejected from the joint and make a little splash spot.

After you've done this to each joint on the component, use needle-nose pliers to wiggle each lead from side to side (in case there is some residual solder holding it to the side of the hole), then pull the part.

This goes pretty quickly when you are removing lots of parts from scrap boards. I amassed a nice collection of expensive and/or hard-to-find (back then) parts from scrap electronic fuel injection boards when I was a whippersnapper working for GM back in the early '70s. Stripped them over my lunch break, on days when no other guys were in the room to be annoyed by the loud noise!

Best regards,

Bob Masta DAQARTA v5.10 Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis

Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter Frequency Counter, FREE Signal Generator Pitch Track, Pitch-to-MIDI DaqMusic - FREE MUSIC, Forever! (Some assembly required) Science (and fun!) with your sound card!

Use a heat gun or propane torch, and remove lots of parts simultaneously.

John

Silly... I'd pick one up on my next trip!

:p

Michael

Solder wick for surface mount, but I love my solder sucker for clearing through holes. It's an OK DP-100. I clean it regularly and put some vacuum grease on the o-ring. Don't know the price, but I wouldn't want a cheap one.

George H.

I put my finger over the hole. and 'click' the plunger. It should stay in place.. if it rises up then I clean it.

George H.

I prefer solder wick for both, though thru-hole is a little trickier. A little additional flux works wonders. As far as solder-suckers go, unless it's vacuum driven, I have no use for it.

I have the RS tool. It's ok but I have a vacuum solder sucker and a decent iron to heat things up. Much better than the RS unit.

yeah, the blue OK Industries is sort of the standard for solder suckers. There are black ones that are ESD safe and conductive or something like that.

I probably got my last one from digikey or allied.