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Budget through-hole desoldering station/gun?

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toli:
You could try and get something used. I got a Hakko 470 for a bit over 100$ locally. Its needed some work (the heating element was blocked, and the nozzle was damaged - I've drilled away the solder that blocked the heating elements air way, and ordered a new nozzle - ended up with a fully working unit for about 125$.

I've used it quite a bit since and I'm unbelievably happy with it. I've used it to remove TH components with 14 legs and more, and they simple fall off the board once I'm done with it.

Hakko usually make good gear that lasts for years, and have replacement parts as well.

bobski:
The Aoyue 474 desoldering station is in your price bracket, though I can't say how well it will hold up to long term use. As is the case with most of their products, Aoyue's desoldering guns take their design from Hakko. So much so that you can use Hakko brand filters in the Aoyue desoldering guns. Interestingly, Aoyue has actually taken some initiative and improved on the Hakko design: The metal tube that carries solder back to the filter is attached to the tip, which better heats the tube and reduces clogging.

About a month back, I adapted my Aoyue 968 station and a gun intended for the 2702 so they play nice together... It seems to be working great so far. Part of my adapting work was adding a thermocouple to the desoldering gun. When asked, the folks at SRA told me none of the Aoyue desoldering gun heating elements included such a thermocouple. That says to me that the desoldering guns are all adjustable wattage (or duty cycle), rather than temperature. I suppose temperature control isn't as important in desoldering work since you're generally removing components that are already fried.

img:
I wonder if Aoyue 474 can be made to work with Hakko 807 handpiece...

saturation:
I just did another salvage and thought I post a pic.  I get a lot of free parts this way, many linear op amps, voltage regulators, and specialized chips ... here's an old sound card fully depopulated with the Atten 858D workstation, took about 1 hour as I gently remove all the parts.

Key tools are an IC popper,  a long neck screwdriver, and tweezers.  The popper will take care of most DIPs, the screwdriver for long DIPs, and tweezers most anything else.  I also use the notorious 'helping hand' because its cheap and takes heat well and if it breaks, its easy to replace .. so far its intact and my oldest ones are 15+ years old.

On the Atten, DIP solder melt in seconds at 400C.  For SMT I have to drop the heat to 300C, and the fan speed or it blow the parts away.  I spent more time position the board than desoldering.








--- Quote from: george graves on July 27, 2011, 10:13:07 am ---^Yea.  I just tried max heat, max flow, with the smallest nozzle.  No go.  It didn't even move the solder.

That trick might work on a un-populated board, but it sure won't work on something like a dip package.

--- End quote ---

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