Hot Air Soldering Tool

[Broz]

What is the best hot air soldering tool (rework station) for the money? I've seen some systems sell for as cheap as $175 and go on up to over $1,000. Are the $175 machines even worth a try? I found this one, what do you folks think?

SparkFun Electronics - Hot-air Rework Station with Soldering Iron HR906

 

[DirtyLude]

You can get the 986 from SRA for cheaper than you can get the 906 from SparkFun. SRA is on E-Bay, so you can usually get it even cheaper there from the same source.

**broken link removed**

I have it and it's an acceptable hot air rework station. I don't have any complaints. I have never used anything expensive, though, so I don't have much to compare it to. Order some extra soldering iron tips, like a chisel tip, if you get it.

 

[Noggin]

I have **broken link removed** that I purchased from SRA over Amazon for $250. I thought the hot air attachment had failed so we shipped it back for repair. It was NDF and they shipped it back. Then it "failed" again a couple of weeks later. I powered it down for half an hour and turned it back on to find that it was working again.

The "failure" I experienced was that the hot air attachement wouldn't warm up (or if it was warm it would cool off). After letting the unit sit for a while powered down it would start working again. It may be a thermal problem inside or it may be a bug in their firmware.

(I should probably update the thread I made after buying it...)