First time SMD repair

[dieseltech82]

The butane soldering iron I used is a Welller rebranded as a Snap On

FWIW, you might want to check out Portasol, and see if their products remind you of above ^.   

I noticed that when searching butane soldering irons Portisol was associated with Weller. I think I paid $100-$125 for mine, so it's no way out of line [emoji106] I know temperature control isn't the best but it worked in a pinch [emoji106]


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[jitter]

I get all that, the OP said he had too smaller tip and would have to have flooded the tab with solder that likely would bridge onto the stitched plane.

Again, I do not agree. Such a huge gap is almost imossible to bridge with just solder, even if you were trying to do so on purpose. Pads on a PCB that are meant to be bridged together (e.g. to enable or disable options) are spaced very closely together and even then require a bit of effort with an iron.

[jitter]

The butane soldering iron I used is a Welller rebranded as a Snap On. I used a decent sized chisel tip, definately not the biggest one. The iron was able to get the pad hot enough to remove the component in 15-20 seconds I suppose. With more experience, it would probably be a lot quicker. I didn't use the largest chisel tip since I had to solder the legs too and I didn't feel like waiting for the iron to cool to change tips. I think I will try and invest in a better solder station or find a good used rework station. I don't do things like this often but it's nice to be able to repair something at a fraction of the cost of a new one.

Even with a good hot air station like a JBC, it would probably take that amount of time. More if the copper under and around the component would have been via stitched to a plane on the other side of the board. In those cases we use a small preheater to gently heat the bottom of the board before we start the removal process. That really makes things a lot easier.

The problem if you need to apply too much heat for too long a time is delamination of the pcb (blisters) could occur, or adjacent components could be damaged.