Soldapullt original vs III

[Eric Smith]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 7:33 PM, dwight <dkelvey at hotmail.com> wrote:

> It is interesting, I do take longer with the hand tools but I've never
> seen as much damage as with a desoldering type iron.
> The tips are too small to hold a good tin and the suction cools the
> joint too fast.
>
> Doing it with regular irom and a pullit does take skill. One has to know
> how to work the pin and the iron. One has to know when a pin is
> desoldered by feel.
>

I've always had mediocre results at best when using a separate sucker, and
good results with a vacuum desoldering station. I use a Hakko 472D-01, and
it works beautifully. I've desoldered thousands of connections with it, and
have never had any damage to PCBs or components.  I have two different size
tips for it, and haven't had any issue with the tip tinning. Once the
solder melts and you hit the button, it extracts the solder far faster than
it can cool, so I've never had any problem with cooling the joint to
quickly.

Patience is also required.
>

Patience is almost always a good idea, but it's not required with a good
vacuum desoldering station. Last fall I installed a DIN 41612 connector on
the wrong side of a board, and only discovered that after soldering more
than half of the 96 pins. I thought it was going to be a nightmare removing
it, but the Hakko made short work of it (less than 5 minutes), and it came
out very cleanly.

Hakko says that the replacement for the discontinued 472D-01 (110W) is the
FR410-03 (140W), and it looks like a nice unit, but it is much more
expensive. The FM-204 (70W) would be easier on the budget, but I haven't
tried it, so I have no idea whether the reduced wattage would be an issue.

Some people may be unaware that with temperature-controlled soldering
equipment, more wattage is almost always better.  That is NOT true for
uncontrolled (or poorly controlled) soldering equipment, such as cheap
soldering pencils; with those it's quite possible and easy to damage
boards, as a consequence of either too little or too much wattage.

Eric