Electronics > Beginners
Can I solder with a desoldering station?
sheiku:
Hi to all,
I have a stupid and simple question for you .
I have no experience with de-soldering stations. I do some ( very rare) repairs with my bad and old soldering gun on some audio vintage amplifiers i have.
I want to buy tomorrow an de-soldering gun, but i do not understand IF is possible to SOLDER also with his gun...
I can afford (and find in my country - Romania something like ) ZD8915 and ZD8925 or ZD-915 ( what do you recommend from them..? :)
On many shops and youtube videos i studied that problem but i do not find an answer. I saw also metal sharp tips "compatible " with many guns. This mean that i change the tip (with a hole) and put another sharp tip and i can use the gun as a soldering station?
Can you enlighten me?
Thank you
Brumby:
I have a ZD-985 and, yes, you can solder with it. However, there are a couple of considerations.....
1. (-ve) The geometry of the tip. The supplied tips have a hole up the middle and are not shaped with any sort of useful profile for applying heat in many soldering situations. (If you can get regular tip shapes that would fit, then this won't be an issue - as long as they are decent tips.)
2. (-ve) Handpieces tend to be more bulky than straight irons. This, plus where the handle is built like a pistol grip (so you can activate the vacuum pump), means controlling the angle and movement of the tip will be more challenging.
3. (+ve) They tend to have decent heating power (to deal with the cooling effect of the vacuum), so if you can get good thermal contact with the workpiece, they can help in soldering heat sucking jobs.
There may be other points, but I haven't tried using mine "in anger" in this way.
Terry01:
The simple answer is yes you "could" solder with a de-soldering gun.
The tip will melt solder as it does before it sucks it up. You could use this in a proper pinch but I wouldn't recommend it as your main way of soldering.
You'd be better with a decent solder station and one of the "big" blue and yellow solder suckers, they are awesome! Also a roll of decent solder wick.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vacuum-De-solder-Gun-Desoldering-Pump-Solder-Sucker-Removal-Remover-TackleRDUK/254424750719?hash=item3b3ce59a7f:g:uwkAAOSw3ZhdIrEH
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3m-Reel-of-2mm-Chem-Wik-Rosin-Solder-Wick-Desoldering-Soldering-Braid-2-x-1-5m/251475610011?epid=19021595474&hash=item3a8d1d499b:g:9YwAAOxydgZTI4-I
I have both and I never use the de-soldering gun for changing out the odd part or 2. I find the gun is only good when you have a load of stuff to de-solder, like stripping a board for parts or something on that scale.
I use my FX-888 to heat the joint up, then the solder sucker to suck the joint out and finally the wick to clean up the pad. The solder sucker is quite big but man it cleans the joint out with 1 suck!
If you don't do lots of de-soldering you'll regret getting the de-soldering gun pretty sharpish I would bet. I did, it's handy to have there on occasion but I for sure could get by without it.
Just my advise though. You'll need to weigh up whether you "need" a de-soldering gun or would be better swapping your old soldering iron for a more up to date model. That is a whole other thread if you do decide to get a new iron.... :)
Good luck however you decide!
sheiku:
I think Terry you have right..
Maybe ( for just a hobby and some occasional work it is better to use a good soldering station and some tape as you told)
But i have a question. in the past i bought and use something similar as the big blue sucking pump. But i canot used it properly because the tip was plastic, or i canot understand how to properly use.
So 1) i warm with the soldering iron the joint
2) i apply the plastic tip of the blue pump over the melted alloy. ( sorry for my English)
BUT ..the pump tip is plastic and almost instantly the tip was damaged by high temperature..maybe one use and after that the pump was unusable..
Any tips?
Thank you
PS What power should be the soldering station to be good in usual situations? Nothing special or very powerful..
janoc:
I have a similar desoldering gun and while you could, in theory, solder with that, you really don't want to. Even a very cheap Chinese soldering iron (e.g. those KSGERs and similar) will do a much better job than trying to solder with one of these guns.
--- Quote from: sheiku on December 16, 2019, 10:51:31 pm ---I think Terry you have right..
Maybe ( for just a hobby and some occasional work it is better to use a good soldering station and some tape as you told)
But i have a question. in the past i bought and use something similar as the big blue sucking pump. But i canot used it properly because the tip was plastic, or i canot understand how to properly use.
So 1) i warm with the soldering iron the joint
2) i apply the plastic tip of the blue pump over the melted alloy. ( sorry for my English)
BUT ..the pump tip is plastic and almost instantly the tip was damaged by high temperature..maybe one use and after that the pump was unusable..
Any tips?
--- End quote ---
If it melted then either your soldering iron temperature has been extremely high or it was made out of poor material. Normally it should be high temperature plastic or even teflon, that will certainly not melt easily. It will have some wear over time, though - that's normal.
One of the best desoldering pumps I have ever used is the Engineer SS-02. That one has the tip made out of a short piece of flexible silicone tube, so it conforms to the joint really well, makes a good seal and thus sucks the solder out like there is no tomorrow. And when the tip finally wears out, you just cut a new piece of the tubing and push it on the nozzle. The only complaint is that it is a bit small for my large hands (I guess the Japanese techs are a bit smaller than me ...)
https://www.amazon.com/Engineer-SS-02-Solder-Sucker/dp/B002MJMXD4
As with everything - don't buy the cheapest junk or your will have to buy twice.
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