Dr. David Kirkby wrote: > Mike Feher wrote: >> I just bought myself a couple of Hakko model 850 hot air surface mount >> soldering stations and various nozzles. > > But that is at quite a considerable cost. Fine if you are a professional > or dedicated hobbiest, but not if you are a child.
Poppycock! and to show we are friends, I'll add a ;-) Wander over to ebay, and do a search on "(SMD,SMT,solder) (rework,re-work, hot air,hot-air)' and tell me what you find. There are very credible HAKKO 850 compatible SMT rework stations available for $70! My 12 year old son buys Warhammer models (tin soldiers for the back pain crowd) for $35 each using a combination of his allowance, and money he gets as presents from relatives. When we were kids (putting on my grandpa Simpson suit), we spent $3 for a cheapo RadioShack soldering iron. As a teen, I spent $3 to fill the tank on my car. To fill that same car with its 19 gallons of gas now costs nearly $60. I think just about any teenager can afford a SMT rework station. Heck, I even import one of the fanciest stations out there from Aoyue in China. It has a 70W digitally controlled hakko compatible soldering iron with fume vacuum, a 500W digitally controlled hakko compatible hot air section, an air flow gauge, and 5 different SMD air tips. I sell the whole thing for right around $200. My point is that the things that my friends and I did to dabble in technology strained our finances way back in the tube era, and the cost to play today isn't all that much more than we paid for a Gilbert chemistry set. > > It's hard to see how a significant number of 7-11 year olds will have > the money to buy that sort of kit and the other bits you need to so SM > technology. There are more than a few guys that are dabbling in SMT manufacturing using a teflon coated electric frying pan. Cooking up a bunch of 2"x3" PCB's is very much like frying up some potato wedges. You have to watch them, and scoot them around a bit with a plastic spatula so that all of the solder gets melted. Wallyworld has electric frying pans for $35. Do a google, and you can easily find instructions for doing SMT work on the cheap. If a kid wants to work in this arena, he will. You ought to see the mass of equipment my son access to (that he ignores completely). -Chuck _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
