[sdiy] Desoldering gun / iron ?

[The Old Crow]

  I'm still using the first filter cartridges since buying these things 2 
years ago.  You have to clean it out every 200 operations or so, but by 
then you have 150g of solder in the thing anyway.  The tips are still in 
fine shape, although I do clean them as often as the regular iron tips.  I 
have an unopened box of 5 new filter cartridges; maybe one day I'll have 
to use one.

  To date I've desoldered about 800 ICs with one gun and maybe 200 ICs 
with the other.  Nevermind de-soldering caps and resistors, etc. of which 
I've lost count.  I've completely re-chipped two Prophet-5s, four CS-80s, 
a CS-50 and about 40 Korg Polysix KLM-367 boards, all with one gun.  They 
cost a lot, but they're very reliable, and replacement parts are easily 
ordered, if necessary.

  Sometimes a gun will clog; then I just use the 'ramrod' tools they
supply with the gun to clean it out.  Usually when it clogs it is a sign
to clean the filter cartridge out.  One note: NEVER use flux on the tip.  
No matter how carefully wiped clean it will vacuum some of the flux into
the filter and gum up things.  Worse, the flux could make it into the pump
and wear it out faster.

  A note about the manual 'bulb-type' de-soldering tools.  The ones with
the heated tip and bulb assembly as part of the iron work pretty well.  
The only cautions are the the waste solder needs to be blown out of the
tip every time into a waste collecting tin.  Otherwise, when you go to
compress the bulb, you might get molten solder splashed across the
workpiece.  The biggest difference vs. the electric pump version above is
speed (and one-hand operation vs. two-handed with the manual tool).  One
can de-solder a 28-pin part about 3 or 4 times faster with the gun-type
tool.

Crow
/**/

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Paul Perry wrote:

> How much maintenance do they require?
> 
> paul perry melbourne australia
> 
> BTW I seem to remember seeing various DIY vacuum solder suckers, based
> on the 'bulb' type.