I'm currently looking for an affordable hot air station for the bench. One that came up often in my searches was this one:
Can anyone recommend this one, or perhaps have a better alternative?
Thanks.
I'm currently looking for an affordable hot air station for the bench. One that came up often in my searches was this one:
Can anyone recommend this one, or perhaps have a better alternative?
Thanks.
It's probably worth at least looking over at Howard Electronics for some baseline pricing
Several on-line sites have similar items, including MPJA, Web-Tronics, Sparkfun, and (of course) Amazon.
The surface similarity is suggestive but I don't know of a site that's published a real tear-down and comparison of one or more name-brand stations and 'house'-branded models.
FWIW, my home bench sports a Xytronic 850D that I've been pretty happy with.
-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
I have one of those. It's not bad, but you should know it's not temperature controlled. The heater control only adjusts the duty cycle of the heater. There's no thermostat, or temperature display. This means that the air temperature will vary with air flow. Andy Cuffe
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I've been looking into this too, and a friend of mine who is a self employed professional electronics designer, has highly recommended this one, which he has had for some time. It is used daily, and he reckons that it represents exceptional value for money
Arfa
Phew. $350 and up. That's a bit over my budget there.
Thanks.
Thanks Arfa, but there's none on Ebay at the moment here in the US. Andy got me thinking about temperature control, though. So I took another look and came up with this one:
It has a digital readout which I assume is for temperature monitoring. Has anyone used one of these?
Found a review.
Another one that looks pretty good:
The Hakko 850D is the same as the 850, but is temperature controlled. This listing has finished, but he had two for sale, and only sold one.
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What are you using now? I don't do a lot of rework but one of my heat guns (for shrink tubing) has some small nozzles, and it works well for removing chips. I douse the offender liberally in liquid flux first. Often there are other small components nearby so I'll make a little cardboard heat shield with a window cut out of it.
I don't see the advantage of a fancy schmancy dedicated rework station. As far as digital readouts and temperature control, I'm a bah-humbug skeptic. You only have one choice anyway, and that's to get the thing hot enough to melt the solder.
Separating the heater from the blower permits a bit more agility, rather on the order of using a pencil iron versus a two-pound soldering gun.
The closed-loop temperature control is useful to allow varying the air flow rate without also affecting the air temp.
I guess it comes down to convenience. For folks who only do onsie-twosie surface mount reworks, it may make more sense to skip the hot air altogether and use the ChipQuik technique
-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
Stan Rubenstein are a very good source for all solder related items, fast shipping USA
I have the Aoyue station, I wish I had bought the one with temp readout but I just wanted to see if they were any good, no problems so far, does its job. JC
I've seen that stuff before, but never tried it. I think I'll get some though, and have it on hand for the next time I need it. Thanks for the reminder.
Ended up getting this one. Using the one of standard single nozzles it came with I was able to remove a 44 pin PLCC with no problems. Tried using the same nozzle to remove a 84 pin flat pack, but this didn't work, so I borrowed a nozzle specifically for that package from the place I work that has a Hakko and it worked perfectly. (Good to know that Hakko nozzles are interchangeable with this station.) I checked its output temperature with a thermocouple and the readings were within 2c of the set temperature of the station. No lifted pads or circuit board damage so far. Overall for the $100 price I'm quite happy with the station, and shipping was fast as well.
as
If salvaging , rather than replacing. Make a mask so you can blast the body of the IC, not the pins, before desoldering
-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
blast with freezer spray that is
Well, for the 84 pin flat pack, I was transferring one of the A/D converters from a scrap Tek TDS540 ACQ board to a TDS544A being repaired. Didn't seem to hurt it, but YMMV.
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