Desoldering question (Miller XMT welder repair)

He doesn't do things the right way.

To be fair desolder stations were incredibly expensive once and even now secondhand reasonably recent Pace etc still fetch big money. I ended up making my own. ;-)

It is a conformal coating. General Cement in Rockford, Illinois, makes a silicone based version called "Print Koat", as well as the solvent.

Part No. 22-203 - Print Kote Conformal Coating The ultimate coating for PC boards. Provides a protective shield to resist environmental contaminants. Prevents arcing and shorting. Air dry

and

Part No. 22-209- Print Kote Solvent A solvent to remove silicone and other types of protective coatings from PC boards. Required when modifying PC boards or replacing components where the protective coating interferes with the desoldering and resoldering operation.

Allied Electronics stocks it.

Snag is the most reliable solder joint is where there is minimum solder infill.

We use Kester 1544 for hand soldering, and desoldering as well. It's fully activated and works very well. At 50% solids content, it's too thick for a foaming flux bath, but works well in a capillary dispenser for hand work. Maybe you have a Kester distributor there? They produce a large and varied flux line.

"Bob La Londe" wrote in news:47a015a0$0$26111 $ snipped-for-privacy@free.teranews.com:

Ghetto desoldering:

Heat up the solder and rap the board, usually edgewise, against the bench.

Works quite well but not recommended unless wearing lots of protection.

What did you make your desolder station out of? I'd be interested to see since I'd consider making my own as well.

Mike

I am not the party to whom this query was directed, but I too made a desoldering station; I used the vacuum pump from an IBM 360/30 mainframe and a new commercial head and filter unit (Weller?, I forget the brand and the unit is in storage) which at the time cost me perhaps $10.00.

For SMT work, see my homebrew solution at:

Michael

:In article , : Ross Herbert wrote: : : :> I would resort to a pure liquid activated flux which sadly is no longer :> produced, Magna Alloys type 87. I still have a small quantity left but when :> that :> is gone... : :We use Kester 1544 for hand soldering, and desoldering as well. It's :fully activated and works very well. At 50% solids content, it's too :thick for a foaming flux bath, but works well in a capillary dispenser :for hand work. Maybe you have a Kester distributor there? They produce a :large and varied flux line.

Kester products not distributed in Australia as far as I can tell. We generally rely upon the Multicore range which is part of the giant German Henkel group. Multicore solder products are grouped under the Loctite brand owned by Henkel.

Basically I wanted something I couldn't really find on the market - or certainly at a price I could afford. So gleaned bits off Ebay, etc.

I like Antex handsets for soldering so wanted those. And easy selection of two with different bit sizes. Auto switch off after a period of time - I've set that at 5 hours. A good buy on Ebay got a Pace SX-80 handset new. Another a Pace pump from a non working base unit. All the electronics are home designed. To keep the size of the main unit down the pump is in an external box.

Pic here:-

Sweet! What did you use to design / print the front panel ? Last few years, I've been using the drawing facilities embedded in MSWord (they actually work very well, and are very accurate, once you get to grips with them), and then printing out and laminating the result. This is then stuck to the front panel using a spray contact adhesive that my mate the carpet fitter gave me. It's very good, but it gives you no second chance ...

Arfa

Designed using Draw on my RISC OS computer and made with the anodised aluminium printing system from RS Components. Not cheap but good value for one offs. And gives a very robust finish.

Wow! Never thought I'd hear of the old 360/30 again, I used to use one of those to channel test tape drives. I remember the pump coming up to allow the micro code to load off of some sort of bladder device.....many moons ago for sure.

I have a commercial de solder>Michael Kennedy wrote: