Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Does anyone know of a manual vacuum picker-upper for SMD parts. I don't have enough of them to do to justify too much expense. But part of what I have to do is remove just a few SMD resistors in a larger field of many such devices. I'm thinking that I'll have to heat the whole board and loosen all of the SMDs and then just pick off the few that I need to. It seems to me that the easiest way to do that will be with some kind of vacuum tool. I think I've seen tool that were operated by actually sucking on a tube in order to pick up the SMD. I also think that I've seen a DIY device that used an aquarium pump to supply the vacuum.

In any event, would someone care to advise me as to what might the best solution to this problem? A vacuum may not be the best way.

Thanks,
Mark