Is hot air better than a soldering iron for through-hole stuff?

I've been doing board repairs for about 5 years now, mostly on old computer motherboards and power supplies. For the longest time I was dead set on using my Weller WES51 iron for everything, including pulling out multi-pin connectors and electrolytic caps. But last month I tried a cheap hot air station for a 12-pin header on a 2005 Dell board... it came out clean in maybe 20 seconds. No lifted pads, no fighting with solder braid. But then I tried hot air on a tiny resistor and cooked the board next to it. So which approach do you guys lean toward for general through-hole desoldering? Do you pick based on pin count or component size, or do you just stick with one method?

2 comments

2 Comments

blair_gibson789d ago

...and that tiny film cap thing is exactly why I don't trust myself with hot air near anything small. Last month I was trying to pull a bad 8-pin DIP socket off a Commodore 64 board. Had my iron on it for like ten minutes, soaking in fresh solder, nothing. Got mad, grabbed my cheap hot air station, cranked it to 400C. Socket came off in five seconds but I melted the plastic on the IC socket right next to it and warped the PCB slightly. Now the whole area looks like a cat walked on it. So yeah, hot air is great for big stuff but you really gotta watch what's around it.

clairem389d ago

Oh man, "no lifted pads" is exactly the thing that sold me on hot air too. I had the same exact experience with a multi-pin header on an old Asus board, my iron was just not cutting it and I was about to lose my mind. I actually switched to a cheap 858D station a few months back for anything with more than like 4 pins, and it's been a game changer for stuff like headers and big caps where you don't want to fight with braid for twenty minutes. But yeah, I totally burned a tiny film cap on a power supply board last week with hot air, so now I just grab the iron for little stuff like resistors and diodes and only bust out the air station for the big connectors. It's really just about picking the right tool for the job based on size and pin count, I don't think you can stick with just one method without ruining something eventually.