Swapped from a solder station to a hot air rework station for SMD stuff

I used to hand solder every tiny SMD component with a fine tip iron for years, but after ruining a $40 logic board on a Samsung TV last month I finally bought a hot air rework station. Now I can pop off and replace those little resistors and caps in under 2 minutes without lifting pads. Has anyone else made the switch and found it way easier for anything smaller than 0805?

3 comments

3 Comments

cole99427d ago

Man I feel that, spent an hour yesterday trying to wrestle a tiny capacitor off a motherboard with my iron and thought I was gonna throw the whole thing out the window.

daniel47427d ago

Hold up, you actually fought a capacitor for a whole hour?

jackson.matthew14d ago

I had a 45 minute fight with a single resistor last week on a vintage amp board. Honestly the whole "fighting" thing with components is mostly just bad technique and impatience. A capacitor that takes an hour to remove means the iron was too cold or you didn't use enough flux in the right spots. With proper heat and a solder sucker you can clear most through hole parts in under two minutes. People blame the gear or the component when really they just need to slow down and work smarter.