The stick will need to have a tiny point as many components have shrunk to almost invisible sizes. Try using a tooth pick instead of a plastic stick. Maybe a spring loaded automatic test probe with a stainless tip. Not a bad idea, but I don't see it as a big seller.
The trick with both flux and super-glue is to use only as little as necessary. For super-glue, that means one tiny drop, not a huge blob. That's impossible with hardware store plastic tip dispensers. It's easy with a metal tube tip dispenser.
Both the plastic and metal tips will clog. However, cleaning the metal tip is easy. Just light a fire under the tip. The hardened glue will burn away, thus clearing the tip. Since I don't smoke tobacco, I have a difficult time explaining why I have a cigarette lighter on my bench and in my toolbox.
I've tried that a few times without much success. It works acceptably for rosin fumes, but I still manage to get burned eyes with super-glue. Probably the clutter on the bench affecting the air flow.
I have one of those from the 80's. It sucks, but was cheap. Until recently, I haven't used it often enough to justify anything better. The worst problems are that the foot pedal cord is too short, the desoldering tip clogs constantly, the vacuum filter clogs because it's too small, it takes 5 mins to get up to temperature, parts are expensive, etc. The newer models are allegedly better, but still quite expensive.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Jeff Liebermann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
My muffin fan sat off to the side,but then I made a bracket to attach it to the rack next to my bench.It was about 18" above the bench top,aimed slightly down. My bench was always messy,too.
You could make an arm to clamp on the end of the bench,mount the muffin fan to that.Or mount a 1x2 to the end of the bench,mount the fan to that.
Jeff Liebermann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
The big problem is that orange sticks & tooth picks aren't ESD safe. Even if youy only use it on the body of the part, there are a lot of shops that would freak at the mere thought. There is ESD safe teflon, and that might work. It still needs to be pointed.
I figure they had to have made some improvements. I don't see how they could still be in business if they were selling the same machine we had. Your experience is pretty similar to ours. Constant clogging was the bigg issue. That & the tips were pretty big even in those days. Now, they'd be hopelessly huge.
Wood is slightly conductive, which should be sufficient to remove any static charge. What it won't do is remove any leakage current from connected AC appliances. I once fixed a production line problem that was caused by induced voltage coming from a transformer located in near the base of a Luxo lamp. The field was sufficient to induce about 100mv of AC at a distance of about 8" to a probe card.
I have a theory about blowing things up with static electricity (which is probably wrong but is worth thinking about anyway). It's the person, not the clothes and equipment that causes problems. I've only blown up a few things with static electricity (walking across a rug with a floppy in my hand. It drew an arc when I inserted it into the computah). I rarely do anything to protect against static, except when I'm playing with GaAsFET chips and xsistors. However, I know people who just walk into the room, and something blows up. One lady was literally a static generator. In the dark, you could see the sparks fly as she moved in her chair and touched things. I tried grounding, discharge mats, and even an ozone (ionized air) generator. Nothing worked. She would constantly blow up equipment. While this is an extreme example, I suspect there are various degrees between her and me. Just a theory.
I've had some fun at such shops with an electrometer.
I would bring the meter to the bosses desk, and immediately determine that most everything he owns, that's made of plastic, is an ESD hazard. He usually spends the rest of the day chasing high voltage readings, which are not very consistent or repeatable. That gets him out of my way so I could get some work done. I managed to convince one manager to go home and change into something that doesn't have polyester.
Just spray everything in sight with some kind of laundry anti-static spray and be done with it. Tap water in a household sprayer works fine.
They're good enough for most of what I do at home. I'm still mired in
1980's ancient technology, where you can actually see the parts and most everything is through-hole technology. My current ongoing nightmare:
Might as well have a 1980's tool to work on 1980's technology.
Incidentally, my lab is 1970's technology and is rapidly approaching the look of a test equipment museum.
The Pace desoldering station is now located in place of one of the Wiltron sweepers, which I stupidly tried to use without replacing all the dried out electrolytics.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Jeff Liebermann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
unfinished wood is not going to GENERATE a static charge. it will have around 10% moisture content,or more depending on your local climate.
Teflon -will- generate a charge.
it's the movement of certain materials that generates the static charge. People merely provide the movement. and the human body capacitance stores a nice charge.
Probably the sort of clothing she typically wears. synthetics and blends are bad news for ESD.
from the ESD classes I've had at TEK,if you can feel a static discharge,it's at least 2KV.Many devices blow at less than 100v,some as low as 30v. In the Orlando Tek center,my colleagues had a harder time passing the ESD foot strap tester,while I passed right after putting it on.Had to test daily. We had an ESD mat on the bench,a floor ESD mat,wrist and foot straps,and a ESD-smock with metallic fibers.We also had the work areas marked with RED tape,where no one else could enter without having their ESD gear on. (like WKRP Les Nessman's imaginary office...)
BTW,there are ESD-testers for the bench and floor mats....
they make ESD-safe chairs...they have a grounding chain that drags on your ESD floor mat.your typical office chair is not ESD safe at all. and you can buy ESD-shoes,too.
not a lasting solution. Risky,as you can't be sure of the level of protection.
the last Pace station I used (in 1998)had different desoldering(DS) tips for SMD work,different than the older Pace station. And the thru-hole DS tips were LONG compared to the earlier ones,prevented clogging in the heater element.
Nope. We did considerable experimentation with clothing, furniture, furniture covers, and anti-static mats. All of these would help, but she consistently failed the electrometer test. (I don't recall the readings). Even with a metal chair on an anti-static mat, she would throw sparks. I would try the same chair and mat and the electrometer would read nearly nothing.
Yep. However, I tend to deal with components installed in PCB's, where the board leakage, and biasing components offer some protection. When replacing an active component, I'm sometimes careful to ground myself with just a simple wrist strap. I don't recall ever blowing anything up during assembly. Other people I worked with would blow up components by just staring at them. Since everything is the same except the person and possibly his clothes, it has to be something in the body chemistry causing the higher static buildup.
Hmm... you're confirming my observations, suspicions and speculations.
Maybe a tin hat or colander with a long grounding strap? In the lab, we used all metal stools with hard fiberboard seats. No ESD problem. We did have a consultant running around looking for ESD and other "safety" issues, but he never noticed the cotton Persian run in my office.
I would sometimes dump in some Photo-Flow or water immiscible oil to increase surface tension and reduce evaporation rate. That's roughly what the anti-static sprays are doing using soap and alcohol. I'm not sure what's in the current anti-static sprays to retard evaporation, but this might offer a clue:
Anyways, the electrometer showed that it would reduce static buildup on a carpet for about 6 hours, which was good enough. I vaguely recall that just tap water would last about 2 hours.
Here's a photo of my Pace desoldering station.
The solder sucking hand piece is a model SX-25. I just found the manual. It's titled "No Clog Solder Extractor" The No Clog is a bad joke. The instructions include a section on how to pound out a broken tip with an 1/8" ramrod. Hopefully, I won't need to do that.
--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS
Yea, I said that in the next post. Still love my old hex iron though. I don't really need all of the de-soldering attachments that the other brands have though. I've been soldering so long that I can get pretty much anything done with just the iron. So if you are in need of something that has de-soldering equipment built into the iron, then it wouldn't be a good all around system.
ESD induced problems usually don't show up right away, they generally show up later on in shortened component life. Our esd lines at most of the places I've worked usually use a conductive floor mat, or floor coating, with footstraps when an individual is all over the floor and wrist straps at work stations. De-ionization stations, and conductive work mats at each work station, with dual grounding for a tester. No synthetic clothing would be allowed, unless you wore a smock over it, and had short sleeves. No food packaging, or synthetic cups allowed at any work stations. No Styrofoam would be allowed, only pink non static foam, or black conductive foam. No plastic bags unless they were the pink plastic or conductive ESD bags. All ESD bags had to be folded over, or else they were worthless. No static producing tape allowed until boards were sealed in ESD bags. All carts had to have chains that would drag on the floor to keep them from becoming a vandergraph generator. Although, if they would have just made the wheels conductive, that probably wouldn't have been an issues. All trays &c... had to be conductive. One big misconception that a lot of people have, is that just because a component is on a substrate it's safe from ESD. Usually still a pretty big risk. Just soldering on the substrate, you can pass a large voltage from you to your iron.
Jeff Liebermann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
I still can't buy that her body generated static charges.
maybe her skin is really dry.
Probably that their feet didn't sweat as much as mine.... Or that they wore different socks.
did you do electronic servicing in your office? Our office area had carpet,the service dept. had vinyl tile. (with a pattern that hid small dropped parts well...)
Our printer guys used to do some repairs in their office area,on the carpet,and they really didn't pay much attention to ESD.
I've had to do it.
Man,that IS an ancient model! Of course,you could order a new handle assembly to use with your base. And the longer DS tips.
BTW,I was wondering if the automotive high temp anti-seize lubricant made by Permatex would help with the tip seize problem? It's rated up to
1600degF. item 81343
It's made to go on spark plug and O2 sensor threads. It's got a lot of aluminum and graphite in it.
I don't really understand the mechanism. My best guess(tm) is that her skin resistance is less than mine. She would present a high surface resistance (ohms/square) while I would present a somewhat lower resistance. I would tend to bleed off generated static, while she would tend to hold it. I've crudely tested this guess(tm) with an ohmmeter. Grabbing the probes between index thumb and index finger on both hands, I usually get about 4M Ohms. This lady would do about twice that. (Note: She died in 2007 so I can't retest).
Yep.
I don't know which articles of clothing cause the most ESD problems. My guess(tm) is that the seat of the pants, rubbing against the chair, would have the biggest effect. Google shows a few ESD safe socks, but far more emphasis seems to be placed on ESD safe shoes. I would think they would go together as an insulator in a problem with both socks and shoes. Plenty of heel grounders, but few ankle straps.
No. I slept on the office floor and the Persian rug (with foam pad underneath) made it far more comfortable. I sometimes dragged finished boards and products into the office for a show and tell, or interview, but there was no soldering or electronics work done in the office (mostly so as not to burn holes in the Persian rug).
My office is all nylon carpet. I've measured the ESD potential with the electrometer and found that the carpet is not a serious problem. My guess(tm) is that it's because I haven't cleaned (or seen) the carpet in 20 years. Also, the RH is now about 85% and rarely drops below 30%, which helps considerably.
Printer repair is mostly mechanical (which is why I like doing it). The electronic part is mostly board swapping. I also used to do it on the carpet, but when my back started protesting, I switched to a proper (low) table. However, one of my work tables is just a steel office desk. The formica or plastic top is a problem. I avoid using it for anything other than storage or paperwork:
In my never humble opinion, the trick to ESD protection is to do some testing with an electrometer. There's no way to reduce ESD to what would be considered safe in a production environment, but testing will uncover some potential problems.
It cost me about $25 plus about $50 in parts about 20 years ago. At the time, comparable desoldering stations were going for perhaps $800. It may be old, it may clog, it may be clumsy, and it certainly is ugly, but it works. However, during the same time period, components and lead spacing have shrunk to the point where it's basically useless. I still use it for thru-hole component desoldering, but for SMT, I'm shopping for a hot air device.
Good idea as a longer tip would be better. I hate to admit that I'm still using the same 20+ year old tip. When I bought it, the original tip had to get pounded out and replaced.
The problem with that stuff is that it has copper, graphite, and aluminum in it. Fine for spark plugs in an aluminum or iron engine head. However, most soldering iron tips are either nickel or chromium (the non-solderable part) plated. The copper will eventually go into solution (galvanic corrosion) and create a ceramic like coating. Avoid the copper stuff. What methinks you want is a nickel based anti-seize to match the tip plating.
Permatex and Loctite both carry it. It's suppose to be for stainless and works to 2600F. I tried some on a big thermostatically controlled iron, with a huge threaded nickel plated copper slab of a tip, and it worked as expected. No stuck tips.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Jeff Liebermann wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
RH is the key. High RH allows the charges to bleed off as rapidly as they are generated.
snip for brevity...
I used to have to use the same Pace handle on a smaller station to desolder all the IC sockets on a board,in order to remove bad sockets.It needed constant cleaning.Fortunately,we had a bin full of tips and filters.
I'm pretty sure the longer tips will fit your older handle. I'd use that anti-seize with them,though.
Hmm,the package I have didn't say copper.I'll check the MSDS.
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