Equipment

[Eric Fahlgren]

Bruce wrote:
> 
> A soldering station is nice. especially if your going to be doing PCB as a
> routine.  $90 is what I have in mine, and when doing several hours of work
> the handle is much cooler then that of a soldering iron.

Sounds like my setup.  I think it's a Xytronic or something like
that.  The thermostatic control of iron heat is very nice, compared
to my old $10 iron.  It heats up in 20 seconds and never cooks any
components.

>    Desoldering, argh, there is a devise that looks somewhat like a turkey
> baster the has a lever you cock, which looks easy to use.  Saw one in
> operation looked like a $20 well spent.

I've got one of those, it works pretty well.  I used it years ago to
upgrade my first generation Mac to 256k, it cleaned the pins off the
RAM chips quite nicely and didn't hurt the 4(?) layer motherboard at
all.  Mine looks like a 1" cylinder with a plunger on the end, with
a trigger button; the hot end is a hollow iron tip, which you place
over the component wire/pin.  Push the plunger in to load it, hold
it against the board in the right place and when the solder starts
to flow, hit the button (releasing the plunger) and it sucks out
the solder.

On the other hand, soldering wick works great, too.

-- 
Eric Fahlgren                            Mechanical Dynamics, Inc
efahl at adams.com                          Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
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