Hot Air Soldering

[UTMonkey]

Hi All,

One of my projects will involve some SMD work (for a QFN part).

Whilst there are loads of tutorials out there that describe you can do this SMD work armed with a trusty soldering iron, I just wondered if there is something easier without being overly expensive.

Take a look at this and let me know what you think?

968 Repairing System [968 Repairing System] - £109.95 : Buy Aoyue, Soldering Equipment Outlet

Regards and all the best of the season!

Mark

 

[DirtyLude]

That's the one that I have and I do QFN's. It works well for me. I use the cheap solder paste from DealExtreme. I spread a little of the paste down, (really small), put the chip down and heat it up. Drops right down and slips into place.

**broken link removed**

**broken link removed**

 

[UTMonkey]

Excellent, many thanks for your advice.

Out of interest does the paste that you use come in a syringe?

 

[DirtyLude]

Excellent, many thanks for your advice.

Out of interest does the paste that you use come in a syringe?

I gave you the link. No, it doesn't come with a syringe. I scrounged one from a printer refill set that I had, but I still haven't used it. I've been using some clips from old resistor leads and spread it on the board as well as I can, which is usually pretty crappily, but it still works.

I have done these with just an iron before as well. You can do it if you need to.

 

[Sceadwian]

This does require a bit of finesse to use as it's not temperature regulated, but you can't beat the price. Works fantastic, only problem I've had with it is multilayer boards. You control the temperature with a dial on the back of the gun and there are two power ranges to chose from. I removed a whole bunch of components from boards I've collected last weekend, it's a really time saver for desoldering and no reason you couldn't use it for soldering. For soldering on stuff you care about the only thing I would suggest is make sure you have a meter that can read from a thermocouple and couple that to the chip your soldering so you can monitor the temperature. Simply pre-heat the board on the maximum low setting and then flip the switch to high till the solder paste melts, then back to low for a cool down and let it aircool after that.

1500W DUAL HEAT GUN-MPJA, Inc.

 

[DirtyLude]

A hot air gun might be all you need if you have access to one. Quite frankly I've used a jet butane letter a couple times and it worked. I'm not suggesting that, but for what we are doing it doesn't need precision.

 

[Sceadwian]

I've used a propane torch, but it's VERY hard to control the heat, that was a big model you might have better luck with a pencil torch, but they heat up so fast it's real easy to torch stuff. For less than 20 dollars it was one of the better investments I've made, should have bought one a long time ago.

 

[kinarfi]

Had to remove some 14 dip chips and hot air seems the most effective method for removing lots of components all at once, heat it up and slap down to remove a lot of solder all at once and maybe the components too.