Homebrew PCBs

For SMD, you don't have to remove it, just re-use it for the
replacement component.

If you do want to remove it, it's fairly easy with SMD, desoldering
braid for example will work great on surface pads as long as you don't
let it cool to the copper and rip the pad off with it.

A desoldering iron is in my experience the best for removing solder
out of PTH holes, by a good margin nothing comes close.
It will also work very well to clean SMD pads, but as i said before
reasonably good ones are expensive.
(Just that we don't get any confusion about it again, a desoldering
iron is a soldering iron of some type where the tip has a little hole
in it through which solder is sucked by vacuum. Key parts are the hole
in the heated metal tip and the vacuum on demand. If those are not
present it is not a desoldering iron in my understanding).

ST

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 3:05 AM, Steve <steve65@...> wrote:
> So the hot air heats the solder to allow removal of the component, right?
>
> How do you get the solder off the pad or out of the hole in preparation
> for replacing it? Seems like a vacuum tool would be useful for that
> function.
>
> Steve
>