12 Nov
2005
12 Nov
'05
10 p.m.
Yes, I hold the board component-side down and flame
it from above--a lot
of components will simply drop out of the board once the solder has
melted--do this out-of-doors as the fumes from the epoxy or phenolic can be
pretty noxious. Keep the flame moving. Sometimes just tapping the board
will cause quite a few components to to fall out. DIPs usually require a
pair of needle-nosed pliers or small screwdriver to remove.
I use a solder pot, filled, so the miniscus (sp?) allows me to just place
the board on the rim of the pot, and all the pads melt nicely. It took me
some time to fine tune the setup, but it works very well. I may never go
back to the torch.
Another thing I do is to heat the board up a little before I do the
pulls. This lessens the thermal shock (although most chips that come out
easy using the solder pot method can actually be picked up in seconds).
On a side note, yesterday I actually saw a real, honest to goodness,
square orange logo'd Sun-1.
William Donzelli
aw288 at osfn.org