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In the market for my first hot air rework setup

I think he is just referring to the trouble of having to re-work lead free solder. Wasnt there a push for that stuff for a while before they went back to alloy? I know I have have plenty of frustration desolderign with it. I use lead based solder myself of course. I assume most of us do.
 
As far as I know, everything made after some magic date is literally required to use ROHS solder.

g.
 
is that a sarcastic comment? I have done plenty of repairs on modern stuff with lead based solder. Requirements are more like "guidelines".
 
Well I got the hot air station in. Went to try it out today and it makes a huge racket when the hot air is on. Sounds like its coming apart. IF you move the unit while the air is on it sounds even worse. Clearly badly assembled. Filed for a return. Just super... Chineseum garbage.
 
VERAULT said:
I think he is just referring to the trouble of having to re-work lead free solder. Wasnt there a push for that stuff for a while before they went back to alloy? I know I have have plenty of frustration desolderign with it. I use lead based solder myself of course. I assume most of us do.
Click to expand...

I usually add some lead-based solder to that crap before I try to desolder it. :<
 
So this return is going to be a huge problem. I can tell by the poorly written and translated emails the seller is chinese. They dont seem to grasp ebay returns or anything I am saying so this will be a long drawn out return until I get the option to drag eBay into it. Just great.

Looks like I will need to choose a different rework station from a (hopefully) different buyer. You never can tell with the chinese sellers as alot of them have many different accounts. What a huge pain!
 
At this point, you don't have anything to lose by opening the thing up and seeing if it's a simple repair. I haven't taken mine out of the box yet. :)

g.
 
VERAULT said:
My next question is what should I use as a heat shiled (to protect nearby components and focus the heat on the IC I am removing). I have some thin gauge alluminum and stainless sheet metal squares. Should I just make a few custom shields for reuse? Would alluminum be more beneficial or less than stainless?
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I just use a cheap roll of aluminum foil from the store. Tear off some, fold it a few times to get 2-4 layers thick and wrap it around the components you want to protect, works fairly well. You can only reuse it so many times before the heat degrades it and it gets full of flux though.

geneb said:
As far as I know, everything made after some magic date is literally required to use ROHS solder.

g.
Click to expand...

It was 2005/2006 from the European ROHS directive that banned lead, cadmium and other heavy metals from consumer products. This is why electronics from 2005 to around 2010 had horrific failure rates, because the industry wasn't prepared and was using whatever they had that didn't have lead in it, which was terrible. Since it overlapped with the capacitor plague, it was that much worse.
 
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