Re: My A2 Hardware Projects

["PZ" <skierpaul@yahoo.com>]

The way a desoldering iron works vs. a regular iron/sucker combo is the
desoldering iron has a heated tip with a hole in it. To use it, you
place the entire tip over the lead to be desoldered and once you've
sufficiently heated the connection up, you disengage the "sucker".
Thus ALL of the vacuum creates suction through the via(hole) in the pcb
while the solder is completely molten.  This beats the conventional
"heat up and switch" method where the solder has time to cool, or the
"heat and suck at the same time" method where most of the vacuum gets
wasted through lateral voids.

I've never needed to use solder braid since I got my desoldering iron.
For the price, it can't be beat, and I surely don't miss pulling up
pads and traces off of pcb's from overheating them.

- Paul


Polymorph wrote:
> Thanks for all of your advices - its good to get the low-down from the
> pro's.
>
> BTW, I do own a solder sucker, but I find it hard to use effectively.
> When removing solder you've got to be so quick and acurate in moving
> the sucker over hot solder for it to work. I tend to find that there is
> always some residual solder left that won't budge, and in the cases
> where I have been trying to remove a component, I find that the
> residual solder is strong enough to prevent me (from removing it). I've
> heard and read about the fluxed copper braid, and would like to try
> that in these instances. Is that what you guys would do?
>
> Maybe if I plan to do a lot of this kind of work, I might invest in a
> desoldering iron as suggested.
> 
> thanks again,
> -p