Desolder station advice

Our research lab is in the market for a desoldering station. My personal interest is in desoldering SMDs of various types, but being research it's hard to plan what we might want to do with it next so having some flexibility is useful. Often we want to preserve both the board and the component so something that won't cause damage would be useful. It's not going to be heavily used, but ideally something that's reliable and can be used by novices.

I see there are two types of station: those with special tips shaped for the particular component to be desoldered (TQFP64, SSOP28 etc) and hot air rework stations. Can anyone advise why to choose one over the other? The disadvantage of the special tips model is that either we invest in all of them, or have to order when we find we need them which will slow things down.

Anyone recommend any particular models/brands? Budget is about 2000ukp.

Thanks Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos
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enought for a weller rework station...use hot air not to destroy the chips... eventually use jbc nozzles to pull the chips up. this protects the others chips around and are cheaper (some 15 euros the twizzle and

50 euros the nozzle) regards
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Jean-Yves.
Reply to
Jean-Yves

With hot air, I've personally found it difficult to desolder a part quickly enough that other parts aren't damaged. I think that hot air works best if you have a preheat station, so that the whole board is warm enough that the hot air nozzle just tips it over the edge.

Even with hot air, you do end up having to buy a bunch of different nozzles for different shaped parts. However, you can usually buy a kit that has the station and a bunch of nozzles.

On a related note, I've also found that the cheap hot tweezers (eg the Xytronics sold by Circuit Specialties) don't seem to work very well. The tips just don't conduct enough heat; the heating elements are in the "arms", too far from the tips.

Reply to
Walter Harley

My experience with hot air has been excellent. Trick is to set temp and airflow high enough to do the job quickly but not blow everything else off. I solder everything except BGAs with a hot air sometimes you need to use shields.

Experience with tweezers types was not so good Elements eventually develop faults that force current through parts and can cause the components in question to fail as well as others connected to them through their common nets... Not cool. I use a cheap Chinese made station

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model CT-953D $380 US and nozzles are $14 each with the budget you have you could get a decent microscope to boot!

cheers

Reply to
newinwa

Could you explain what the "PASS" system is? I didn't get anywhere with Googling - do you mean Pace?. Are you saying that you'd use hot air, unless you had to do high-throughput work in which case you'd go for hot air and vacuum? Or do I misunderstand?

I've seen vacuum tools which are just like old fashioned spring-loaded solder suckers but a vacuum pump instead of a spring - they don't look much use to me (I can wick/suck most of the solder off, but the device is still stuck to the board with the last few drops). I presume by vacuum you mean vacuum to pick up components once they're heated?

Also what sort of wattage is recommended for a general purpose system? I notice Weller here:

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differentiate between 700W and 100W systems, saying 100W is for 'smaller SMD components'. What's 'smaller'? A 0402 resistor or a QFP100?

Pace's systems look nice (looking at ST325), though why the tips are all

80ukp each is beyond me :( They don't suggest a selection of useful tips either.

Thanks for the suggestions Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

Do you improvise the shields or are these a special tool somewhere?

Nice. At that price I could almost afford one myself :) Shipping one from .au to .uk is perhaps a little silly though...

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

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Reply to
Art

Thanks for the feedback everyone. The two options I've put forward are the OK Industries HCT-900:

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(400ukp plus nozzles, total 600-800ukp)

or the Pace ST325

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(930ukp plus nozzles, total 1400-1800ukp)

It's up for debate whether we need temperature profiles and vacuum pickup, which are the main features of the more expensive model. I still don't understand why nozzles are quite so expensive though...

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

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