SMD hot air rework station - pics + caution - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Pat Pending
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2013, 10:27:23 pm
content: I needed a hot air rework station. One without the fan built into the hand piece, nor one that was a soldering iron / hot air combo.There are some units with a floating ball air flow indicator that some have said wasn't of much use.I settled on the Yihua 8508D and discovered that Sparkfun was selling a similar unit, so this cheaper unit seemed a good choice.It arrived well packaged, the box wrapped in Yihua packing tape as though it had just left the factory. I plugged it in and .... nothing.Internally the blue leaded connector had worked loose. It and the connector beside it had not received the red gunk treatment andthere was barely enough grip to keep it secured once reattached.On my unit the hot air gun was poorly earthed by a few strands of copper on the front solder lug.The solder lugs reuse the bolts for the rubber feet and there is no shake proof washers.Paint is well applied to the steel chassis but unfortunately insulates the front panel from earth.Calibration is simply setting the desired display temperature then tweaking the uppermost pot until the air temperature matches.The bottom pot sets the absolute minimum airflow when its dial has been set to one.Its smells something awful, and I'd advise trying to burn the fumes off outdoors.The pump is well made though in places the silicon tubing it too short and kinks into the airflow.The temp display always shows 100 when fully adjusted CCW and 450 when fully CW. But when the heater pot is a just inside of thattravel range only then is the true hot air gun temperature shown.The accuracy is terrible and I simply note the settings and record the air temp with an external thermocouple.In short it's very effectively for SMD removal and repair.

author: BHillam
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 29, 2014, 01:23:06 pm
content: This doesn't really deserve a thread of its own so this seems to be the most appropriate place to post.I bought an 8508D+ from an eBay seller in Brisbane for under $60 with free shipping and wanted to share my experience. I jumped on this model when I saw it was the same price as the 858D and looks to be better build quality - I heard stories of mains on the chassis, fuse on neutral, no grounding, etc. so I wanted to avoid it.I've taken a lot of photos so the album is hosted externally:http://imgur.com/a/yenmK.The only major problem was that the supplied IEC cable is cross-wired with active and neutral reversed. I've yet to get any actual use out of it, but I checked that it does power up and appears to work out of the box.I won't be using it again until I've replaced the IEC socket with one that has thicker pins - as all of my (correctly wired) power cables fit the existing socket too loosely and I'd rather destroy the supplied cable.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2014, 01:41:51 pm
content: guys, i don't get your complaints.... you got exactly what you paid forbuying cheap equipment is ok, but you can't expect high quality. in most of the cases with cheap equipment you will have to tweak/fix the product to make it safe and/or reliable.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2014, 04:45:51 pm
content: That's why a black box testing of the ground path with an ohmmeter is not enough. You need to open the unit and inspect the quality visually. The quality of the connections, the thickness of the ground wire and so on.I got in the past one of those small digital units with fan in the hand piece. It worked well and passed the external ground measurement but when I opened it the quality of the ground connection was very poor. I returned it and got a used Hakko 850 from ebay. It's not as fancy and it costs more but is well built.

author: BHillam
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 30, 2014, 10:17:40 am
content: Put it through its first trial - replaced an 0603 resistor I couldn't reach with the soldering iron between some RGB LED's.

author: hobo2566
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2014, 09:26:07 pm
content: Could you post picture of underside of PCB, the green side? Is there any wire bridging, or resistor bridging of connections on PCB?I need the picture because my unit stopped working properly and upon dissembling i noticed PCB was cut on few spots and reconnected with resistors, also on one place there is 5cm wire bridging. I need to compare that with working unit to see if that is problem or normal, tho i fear this is not in any design, not even in machines like this one.Thank you upfront for help!