The hot-air conundrum

Equipment
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I recently posted that about what hot-air rework station I would buy if I had to buy one right now. Since then I’ve been doing some research, and now I’m not quite so sure anymore…

What I have

This is a pretty basic combination soldering and hot-air station. While the soldering iron is not bad, I don’t actually use it because I have a better one.
The hot-air handle is pretty much the same as thousands of other hot-air stations, where pretty much everything is in the handle. These stations are cheap, which is nice, but my problem with it is that the air speed can’t really be turned down far enough, so you have to be really careful when using it, or it will blow away small components.

What I said I would buy

This one is widely recommended on other forums for hobbyists. The construction is a better, and the blower is in the base unit instead of the handle. People rave about how hot and how fast it can blow, which I guess is great, but I haven’t seen any information about how slow it can go, which is really what I want. In general, nobody who reviews hot-air stations seems to care about the minimum speed.

The more money then sense option

If you happen to have $850, and nothing to spend it on, this is supposed to be the best hot-air station there is. In addition to the basic hot-air functionality, this also has a vacuum pump that connects to a small pipe coming out of the middle of the hot-air stream. This allows you to pick up chips directly with the handle, at least if the chip is big enough for a suction cup to fit on it. This thing is also meant to work together with a pre-heating pan and an arm thing that should make it absolutely fantastic for working with large chips. For fixing graphics cards and laptops, this is probably the best there is. For my use, it’s probably not.

The dark horse

I’ve used a different version of this, and I liked it. Unlike all the other units in this list, it uses a diaphragm air pump. This makes it noisier than many other options, but I do wonder if it doesn’t give better control over the air flow at lower rates. On the flip side, the air pump cannot produce as much air flow as a blower, so if you need that, this is probably not the right choice.

But wait, there’s more…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XPG8VPG
I would have already bought this one, because the thinner ligher hot-air pencil looks like it might be exactly what I need. However, I just couldn’t get past the fact that they literally put “A MUST for Fixing Small PCB’s, Mobile Phones & Tablets!” in the name of the product to make it seem better than it is. Now it doesn’t seem to be available anymore, and I haven’t found any reviews of this thing that I trust.

Final Thoughts

Buying a hot air rework station seems to be rather difficult. Only Hakko seems to care enough about quality of their product to sell replacement parts, and of course they are the most expensive. I think maybe I would buy the Aoyue, because it’s relatively inexpensive, and I did like the one I tried before. Although, maybe I will find a better option before I actually need to buy one…

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Very informative thank you.

I did happen to buy one of the cheap ones as I’m not sure how much it will be used.
It has as you said in your first example “got all the gubbins in the wand” so is rather bulky to handle i find.
But the fan speed did seem to be quite controlled after I turned it down because I blew off one of the caps.
Once down to about 2 on the scale it worked OK and did not seem to blow hard enough to blow any more components off.
(Although I have only used it once to actually repair something so my experience is basically nill)

If I use it more then I will consider one with a better wand design for better control.

But for now it does what I require it to do.

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This is great information. I was looking at a hot air rework station with soldering iron combo as my hot air gun was too big for my workstation so I wanted to get a better soldering iron then what I got plus have a built-in rework hot air station built in.

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Dang, hakko is proud of their rework stations! I love my hakko iron but it was 1/8th the cost of the hakko rework above.

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I stumbled across an old Hakko hot-air station on ebay. When I looked up the user manual, it turns out that it uses a diaphragm pump, quite similar to the Aoyue station. Looking through their old units, it looks like lots of them did. I wonder why they switched to blowers? Because it’s better? Or because it’s cheaper?

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So I bought the Aoyue station.
I haven’t actually used it yet, but I already don’t like it.
Unless I’m missing something, the unit doesn’t actually remember what temperature it was set to when you turn it off, so every time you want to use it you have to set the temperature, which is basically a non-starter for me, regardless of how well it works when you use it. :frowning:

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Did you try #define SAVE_TEMPER…oh nevermind.

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You jest, but it turns out that the Aoyue has a Atmega8A processor in it, which can be programmed from Arduino. Since I think the hardware might be fairly reasonable, and it’s mostly the software that is junk, I’m probably going to have a go at reprogramming it.

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Time to throw another hat in this ring:

My old hot-air station, (the yihua above) finally gave up. And my project to upgrade the Aoyue 852A++ is not done yet, so I needed to buy a new hot-air station.

The Quick 861DW might have been the obvious choice, but the price has gone up, and I found a good candidate at a good price on Adafruit. I just tried it out for the first time, and I have to say that it’s very nice to use. The air flow can be controlled down to very low rates, and at those rates, the solder just melts without blowing small components away! Very nice. :slight_smile:

It has an on-off-button on the handle, which is a little weird. I kind of wish it would just turn itself off when you put the handle in the cradle instead, but that’s a pretty minor complaint I think.

Anyways, first impressions are good, and if I’m still using it a year from now, I will give it my stamp of approval. :slight_smile:

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Sounds like time for a reed switch mod :slight_smile:

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Might not be that simple, because the on/off switch is a momentary switch, not a latching switch.

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Take a look at the Thermaltronics HA100 or the HA300 systems. I recently upgraded to one of their soldering stations and the quality is fantastic. As nice as Metcal, for less cost.

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I must admit that I’m a little sceptical when it comes to thermaltronics.
For one thing, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of stores that sell their products, and those that do look fairly pricey.

Also, their HA600 looks exactly like the Aouye 852A++, but is 1300W instead of 500W. It’s possible that the Aoyue is a knockoff of the HA600, but it seems more likely that they are simply made by the same supplier or factory. If the HA600 has the same crappy software that the Aoyue does, then it is definitely not worth the $400+ that it seems to be selling for. (The Aoue sells for $140, and I think that’s still too high.)

Might not mean anything, but I’m sceptical.

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It’s possible Aouye ripped off Thermaltronics, or that Thermaltronics didn’t want to bother making their own hot air station and is buying them from the same MFG as Aouye. The manual for the HA600 even mentions the red-wax covered shipping screw on the bottom.

The HA100 and HA200 both look to be their design though, as it matches the cast aluminum housing of their soldering stations. Without owning either though, I really can’t speak to their quality or function. All I can say is so far the soldering station has been excellent (same as the similar Metcal I’ve used).

I mean, there is always Metcal if you’re not happy with the random Chinese rebranded stuff out there… Personally they’re just too $$$ for my wallet.

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I put Metcal in the “more money than sense” category.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind spending money on good tools, but it has to be worth it.

I can’t stand companies that charge 10x the price just because they have a good reputation. I would rather solder with a hot nail.

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Exactly why I bought a Thermaltronics soldering station. :upside_down_face: The Metcal equivalent was $400 more, and from everything I could find, functioned exactly the same. I think it makes sense in a production environment (where I was introduced to Metcal), but that’s about it.

Sometimes the price is justified by the reputation (support + quality), but I agree, it’s generally not.

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It’s even worth with oscilloscopes.
I’ve been looking for a good one for a good long time, but there isn’t a single honest oscilloscope maker. They all charge an arm and a leg, and then they lock down half the functions and make you pay another arm and a leg to unlock the thing you already bought!

I ended up buying an USB3 oscilloscope from dreamsourcelabs, at least they have open-source softtware, so if some functionality is missing, I can potentially add it myself.

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Oh yeah, the software oscilloscopes are really impressive for the money. That kit you got looks pretty slick!

I just have a dinosaur, big old HP oscilloscope, not good for anything much today (which is why it’s buried in storage).

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I have to say, so far the ATTEN ST-862D hot air station I bought from Adafruit has been a winner so far. It heats up fast, keeps the temperature steady, and most importantly: It lets me set the air flow low enough that the components don’t blow away! (None of the cheap units I’ve had lets me do that.)

It’s also pretty quiet, which is a bonus.

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Good feedback. Not to sound too “fanboy” but I will say most anything if not all that I/We have bought from Adafruit has been great stuff. In my eyes they’re more than a business, they are “like us” and want to support the hobbyist, learner, and the rest of the electronics industry. You can’t beat a solid business model and solid product.