Homebrew PCBs

On Sun, 03 Sep 2006 18:20:48 +0200, derekhawkins <eldata@...> wrote:

> Well, with small SMDs and high density placement, trust me,  you
> wouldn't want to use a hot air tool for soldering at all. Even when
> desoldering, where the tool is most useful, there are issues with
> unintentionally removing surrounding SMDs. Yes, you can speculate all
> you want but it's quite obvious that your SMD soldering experience is
> limited.


You must use too much airflow or something.
I have no trouble at all to take off individual components of something  
like a densely populated harddrive, without disturbing surrounding parts,  
with just the large heat gun even without any nozzle at all. Yes, others  
will melt, but why should they be removed? Just dont touch them, grab the  
one you want to replace with tweezers and take it straight up. I really  
don't think there are boards where you can't even get tweezers in between  
components.
As far as i know the people working on mobile phones use hot air too...

I've SMD soldering tweezers as well, but compared to hot air they are a  
PITA, and short of special iron tips i see no other way to remove smd  
components.

soldering is of course even easier since you do not have to touch the  
component when everything is hot to remove it.

So if you make such claims, maybe support them with industry examples,  
examples for hot air rework there are plenty....

ST