The hot-air conundrum

profezzorn · January 15, 2024, 1:45am

Now if you want to save a few bucks, I would probably recommend buying the japanese version of the desoldering gun from ebay, and you can get third-party soldering stations that accepts the same tips as the soldering station I use. The tips are the important part IMHO, so saving some money on the soldering station is probably fine.

Finally, if you really want to up your soldering game, consider a microscope:

The Magnification Observation Equipment

I’ve soldered for a long time, but I wasn’t always good at it. Better equipment, solder and practice has made me better of course, but good magnification is an instant level up in your soldering skills. Finding good magnification can be a challenge though. Here are the things I’ve tried: Small desk magnifier This thing did work, but just barely. The magnifying glass doesn’t provide enough magnification, the light is weak and the optical quality is not great. Not recommended. Large desk magnifier This worked better, and I still use this for some things, but not for soldering. For soldering you really want something that provides a good stereoscopic view, and looking with both eyes through a single magnifying glass tends to not work that well. The first stereo microscope This is a gigantic step up from the desk magnifiers above. It’s also a big step up in price unfortunately. Soldering with one of these lets you see exactly what you’re doing. The base is magnetic, so you can attach helping hands to it, and I used to velcro my brass soldering cleaning sponge to it. I highly recommend using something like this when soldering. The second stereo microscope After my first run of proffieboards, I decided to upgrade some of my equipment, so I bought the best stereo microscope I could find. While it is definitely better than the one above, and having a camera on it is very handy at times, it is much more expensive than the microscope above. So I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have cash to burn. The difference while actually using this and the one above is just not enough to warrant the high cost. Things I haven’t tried Head-mounted magnification is cheap and seems to work well for a lot of people. There are a lot of versions of this, I just linked one that looks what I have seen recommended elsewhere.