[sdiy] Desolder Station?

[epeasant at telusplanet.net]

>I've got one of these too, but I retrofitted mine with a foot-long piece of

>rubber tubing with a springloaded solder sucker attached. That's not quite

>adequate for some things, so the next step is to attach about 5 feet of 
>tubing with a filter and a small Gast vacuum pump on the other end. Once I

>get around to doing this, I'll let everybody know how well it works.

My main desoldering system is a big old desoldering iron that used to have the
rubber bulb. I threw away the bulb and attached tubing instead and a small pushbutton
switch to operate the vacuum. I then hooked up a fairly large vacuum pump with
a bottle reservoir and a solenoid valve. The pump runs constantly and maintains
the reservoir vacuum level, and the switch on the iron runs the solenoid. I
find this pulls out the solder FAR better than using the conventional desoldering
stations that use a smaller pump and trigger it from the iron. With the solenoid
system, as soon as you press the button you get a very sharp pulse of vacuum,
instead of a slower build up as the smaller pump starts up in a conventional
station. So I very much recommend this retrofit.

Take care,
Doug

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The Electronic Peasant

www.electronicpeasant.com