On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:55:12 -0700, Mr. INTJ wrote:
> I started doing hobby electronics again fairly recently, and recycling/
> scavenging is a big draw for me. As it happens, my company throws away
> lots of useful stuff, and over the past year I've brought home lots of
> circuit boards with various useful parts on them.
>
> I've got a solder sucker and solder wick/braid, but components with more
> than two or three leads continue to be a problem for me. I have a little
> soldering station with a soldering iron, but I've been thinking that I
> probably need some hot tweezers or a heat gun of some kind. Most of the
> stuff that I'm recovering from these boards are through- hole components
> ... I haven't graduated to SMT-at-home just yet.
>
> I don't mind springing for the right tools, but I don't want to buy
> something only to find that it still isn't very effective.
>
> I'd like to hear from the folks that do a significant amount of this
> kind of thing (desoldering), and which tools/methods they favor.
It's been a while, but I remember an Ungar screw-in tip that hit all the
pins of a 16-pin DIP at once. Usually though, a spring-loaded solder
sucker would remove almost all of the solder from each pin, leaving such
a small area of contact that it could be broken with a sharp probe. For
cheap SSI parts, a heat gun is probably best, though I never had one.
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