patroclus

Hello,
I'm thinking about buying a cheap soldering station. I found some of them I can afford. Two of them have a soldering iron and a hot air soldering gun too.

So far I'm only interested in the iron, but I heard that the gun is pretty useful in superficial soldering (and SMD?). Is it really a good tool for these tasks??
I might start doing some superficial soldering soon.
Should I spend some more money and go for the air gun??

Thanks!

dsp

Its really good to have that kind of tools because some of electronics board and circuits are using SMD devices that cannot be remove by the soldering iron, i also bougth one before and im using this and repairing cellphone ....

patroclus

so, basically, what is does is solder and desolder using very hot air instead of iron tip, isn't it?
I heard that it was great too to tin PCB pads before solder superficial components. am I wrong?

But, is it accurate? I mean, if you heat up a tiny IC or SMD resistor, whouldn't you be heating up near by components too??

evandude

hot air is more often used for desoldering, if you're using it for soldering chances are you'd want to use solder paste and do it like it's done in a reflow oven. However, if you're soldering a SMD IC, you could solder it with the iron, and then use the hot air gun and some sort of small pick to remove any solder bridges you caused.

Let's put it this way, I'd really really really like a hot air rework station like that, if I wasn't a poor college student :lol:

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Dean Huster

Hot air is used with various-sized baffles on high-end Pace rework systems for removing and installing SMD chips with billions of pins. Small hot air irons are also handy for tight spaces when trying to install heat-shrinkable tubing.

Dean

__________________
Dean Huster, Electronics Curmudgeon
Contributing Editor emeritus, "Q & A", of the former "Poptronics" magazine (formerly "Popular Electronics" and "Electronics Now" magazines).

R.I.P.

dsp

when you remove some SMD parts you need to apply flux on the area were you want to mount and demount the parts this is to become easily melt down the solder on the parts you want to removed and to avoid the near parts blown away. I used this also in removing BGA IC which you cannot use soldering iron....

Westinghouse

I used to repair mobile phones and we rarely used irons. Use a liquid non-residue flux and keep the gun moving and you won't have a problem. Very useful for tightly packed smd PCB's. Some mobile phones have RF shields covering certain components, we removed these off old scrap boards and used them to cover any close IC's that we didn't want to solder.

n.house

One way around this would be to buy a gas iron, you can get a reasonable one for about $30 and they have both various tips and hot air bits. I use them and they are fine.

tunedwolf

if you have the chance of a good quality rework station at reasonable money, go for it...you can always learn how to use the hot air pencil later on...

I use Pace stuff here, and can definately say it's the dogs...but it's mega money unless you're lucky enough to have a pal inside

n.house

Yes Tunedwolf, I agree, Pace equipment is excelent, I prefer Metcal myself but, as you say, we are not talking cheap here!!!

tunedwolf

yup..Metcal stuff is just for drooling over...

but as you work for auntie maud...it's no surprise you get to play with the toys...you lucky sod...

n.house

Thank you tunedwolf, and just to rub it in, I have a £65k network/spectrum analizer on my work bench and I've been asked to go to Costa Rica next month. Bit of a bugger really AHHH.

tunedwolf

Ok...I need a job where you work...

philba

costa rica, man that's tough duty. you just need to watch out for all those old guys on sex tours...

tunedwolf

hehe....sif he has any chance of a pick-up...