The [WEP/Atten/Yihua//Wylie/etc] 858D has served me well for several years now. 
The handle is chunkier since it has a small squirrel cage blower instead of a 
remote aquarium-style air pump, but it’s a lot cheaper and has fewer parts to 
break. It also functions well as an intermediate tool between a hair dryer and 
a heat gun, which is nice for more delicate tasks like heat shrink 
tubing/Monokote for RC planes/welding & bending small plastic parts/making tiny 
servings of crème brûlée/etc.

As with all no-name equipment from China, be sure to check the wiring: 
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/deadly-wiring-fault-atten-858d-hot-air-rework-station/

If you prefer an iron and only have a few large ICs to remove, there’s also the 
option of low melting point solder:
http://www.chipquik.com/store/
http://www.zeph.com/lowmelt.htm

Tools for grabbing components:
- good quality tweezers
- a manual hand pump (www.ebay.com/itm/131206538767) only useful as a source 
for pickup tips when connected to an aquarium pump for a DIY tool
- the fantastic but expensive Hakko 394 
http://www.amazon.com/Hakko-394-01-Vacuum-Pick-Up-Safe/dp/B009SCKYV6


Side note: I’m never giving up my classic Hakko 936 — you can’t stack anything 
on the new Hakko soldering stations because they’re rounded on top!


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On Mar 11, 2015, at 10:29 AM, David Madden <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 3/11/15 10:17 AM, Philip Odom wrote:
>> Second on the Metcal stuff, if you want to spend the money. BUT pretty 
>> expensive.
>> 
>> I have a Hakko FX-888D at home,
> 
> Do these have hot air as well?  (Is it as useful as I imagine?)
> 
> I do hot-plate reflow fairly successfully (down to 0603, 0.5mm and
> QFN48) without stencils, just squirting solder on the pads.  I usually
> rework QFNs by reheating with my firestarter pencil iron and
> solder-braid sucking the excess out.  (Yes, I know: it's a horrible
> stone-age process, but it's the best I know how to do so far.)
> 
> But I have trouble removing / modifying multi-pin things, because I
> can't get the whole thing hot enough at once.  (I have a friend who just
> puts a big glob of solder over the whole part and gets 'em off that way,
> but daaayum, that's beyond my skill.  He does QFN with a big ol' 40W
> pencil iron, dragging packages around on a pool of solder by surface
> tension!)
> 
> So it seems like if I had hot air, I could heat up a package quickly and
> grab it with tweezers or vacuum.  Not so?  Or is the tool to do that
> reliably just really expensive?
> 
> I was looking at the Aoyue 968A+...
> --
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> - Small Business, Startup and Intellectual Property Law -
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