On Aug 12, 2006, at 4:50 PM, aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote: These tools are mainly used for surface-mount assembly and/or rework. The pneumatic solder paste pump is for dispensing solder paste in metered amounts. Solder paste is tiny spheres of solder in a semi-liquid flux carrier. It is typically sold in syringes that look like the ones for medical use. For manual dispensing, you put on the right sized tip (where the needle would go) for the size of pads you're working with, and squeeze out some solder paste on each of the pads. The trouble is, the paste is very thick, and (especially with smaller-diameter tips) your hand will get tired and achy VERY quickly. Pneumatic dispensers have a hose which clamps onto the "hand" end of the syringe and pump bursts of compressed air into it to force the solder out through the tip. The pressure and volume of the air is tightly controlled by the dispenser unit to squeeze out the correct quantity of solder. This is usually done under the control of a foot switch. A hot-air pencil is very simple. It looks like a standard soldering iron, except instead of a solid metal tip that gets hot, it has a hollow metal tip through which very hot air is blown. You basically blow hot air at the joint you want to solder instead of transferring the heat to it by touching it with the hot tip. If you are interested in seeing what this stuff looks like, I can take some pictures of my equipment and put them on a web server. Let me know. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Cape Coral, FL