General Purpose Tools

Hot Air Rework Station

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Flows solder over a large area

I’ve wanted one of these hot air rework stations for a long time and lucky for me my wife and kids got me one last Christmas. I love this tool and it’s a joy to use.

A hot air tool allows you to flow solder over a large area so you can do things like pull multi pin connectors and circuit chips off a board – something that is extremely difficult to do with a traditional soldering iron. With this unit I was able to remove multiple circuit chips and connectors off an old computer motherboard in minutes without damaging any of the parts or the board. A hot air tool also allows you to solder tricky little surface mount components when building your own boards. Sometimes SMT components will have leads positioned underneath the chip, which makes them pretty much impossible to solder onto a board with a traditional soldering iron – with this rework station it’s a piece of cake. Having a hot air station also makes quick work of heat shrink on connectors and wire splices.

This station has a readout for the temp and the temp and airflow are adjustable. It heats up really fast and has an auto cool down cycle after you turn it off. I was also surprised by how quiet it is – I expected it to be a fair bit louder and it only gets loud when you have the air turned all the way up. The handle is a nice size and it stays very cool. There are a lot of these stations on the market and they range from around $60 on up to well over $1000- I don’t know what the high end stations offer but they must be pretty spectacular given how well this thing works. At a little over $100 it’s an absolute bargain and I highly recommend it. If you’ve ever soldered a chip or connector in backwards or you’re trying to salvage parts from another board, this is the tool for you. Every electronics bench should have one.

-- Jerome Kelty 05/31/16

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