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Comment by sandreas | Hacker News Reader

Starting with soldering, I find these 200$+ recommendations (regardless of which tool) hard to justify.

# Soldering iron

I'd recommend the Pinecil V2 with IronOS. https://github.com/Ralim/IronOS

# Solder fume extraction

I've built a simple fume extraction with an old plastic case, a 120mm fan and a sheet of carbon filter attached to a 120mm dryer / air conditioning hose. Around 15$ and good enough for soldering from time to time.

# "Microscope"

I simply use a strong (10x) magnifier glass with a LED ring (around 15$ on Amazon). I can't tell you how often I also used this thing for other purposes.

# Desoldering Pump

Because I needed it (beginners won't) I bought a ZD-8965 for 100 bucks and I'm very happy with this thing.

I have whole list of cheap beginner to intermediate equipment, that'll do until you solder (semi) professionally.

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I second this comment and it really should have been higher in the hierarchy - WTF are you going to do with an expensive setup that a lit magnifier and controllable iron (with interchangeable tips) can't?

If you need a reflow oven, that's a different thing altogether, and you should probably repurpose an old toaster oven.

I delivered production boards (small run) that looked and worked great using a non-adjustable $10 30w iron (interchangeble tips, though) and a desklamp with the builtin magnifying glass.

You can't really tell the difference between a cheap setup and the expensive solder station I used in a previous employment.

Hard to justify for a beginner? Sure.

"Can't tell the difference?" is not true, once you're dealing with small enough parts.

Can I use a magnifier to solder 0.4mm pitch parts? Sure. Would I prefer a binocular microscope? 100%, every time. Both usable, not the same.

> "Can't tell the difference?" is not true, once you're dealing with small enough parts.

Yeah, but that's the qualifier - "small enough parts". Go small enough and even an expensive iron isn't going to help you.

Except that we're on HN so it shouldn't really surprise anyone that I'm using these "expensive" tools to solder and correct 0402 and sometimes 0201 parts.

Effectively impossible without a stereo microscope.

I soldered a backlight fuse of a Lenovo T480s with a 35$ iron and a 10x magnifier, see [1] (german)

I'm not trying to proof you wrong but sometimes good enough will do. However, good tools are worth the money most of the time.

1: https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/t480s-backlight-si...

I understand that you're trying to flex a bit to prove your point, but a 2-lead rectangular discrete and dead-bugging a QFN-24/28 are in entirely different spectrums of difficulty.

Edit: Apologies, in my head I was replying to a different thread. I would still say that if you're working at that scale you should deploy appropriate tools to make the job simple, fast and repeatable.

Doing work on extremely small parts without a stereo microscope offers extremely small returns once you've finished proving your point to nobody watching.

This is a weird take to make before you actually ask the question.

I design and prototype devices for a living. I use a combination of reflow and hand soldering depending on which stage of the process I'm working through, and/or how much trouble I might be having with some aspect or another.

For example, there have been times where I've successfully dead-bugged QFN-24 to a PCB, allowing me to verify a fix and save myself several weeks and several hundred dollars.

All of these tools are only expensive in a vacuum. The moment you're relying on them to create products, and assuming you value your time correctly, you can see them for what they are: usually one-time fixed expenses that end up saving you thousands of dollars in board revisions that you never had to order.

Meanwhile, lots of people use cars as part of their job. Even a shit car costs many times what my soldering tools cost, and nobody would show up on HN to imply that they don't need a car.

> # Desoldering Pump > > Because I needed it (beginners won't)

Funny you mention that, because I just instructed someone how to solder for the first time and on probably their 4th joint they needed the desoldering pump because they added too much solder. I think it's easier to teach a beginner how to use a desoldering pump than how to use desoldering braid.

That might be true in some cases, but you can also use a bit of brass wool to wipe of excess solder. The iron will suck the rest of the connection pretty well.

However, this is also something where it might pay of to buy a good one (ENGINEER SS-03) instead of a cheap knock-off in the long term.

This thread is no good for my bank account. Ordered

I think it's easier to teach how to do good work when the instruction method prevents getting bogged down by fixing mistakes to begin with.

Too much or too little heat/time/solder/whatever? No worries; just move on to the next joint and try to get it a little bit better than the ones before.

This tends to mean working with practice materials instead of with real boards that actually have some future value, and that's quite OK. The practice has value in and of itself.

---

I can't imagine having to stop all forward progress and learn how to fix a thing after so few tries of something new.

We don't throw kids straight into the batting box and watch them strike out ("Sorry kid, maybe you can try again next weekend!"); we instead provide time and materials for them practice with first, let them make mistakes over and over again, and focus on encouraging the successes.

And then -- after enough practice that a good amount of familiarity is instilled -- they eventually get to go play a game of baseball.

Soldering should not be different in this way.

A hand operated solder sucker is like $5 though, they are talking about the station based ones that can be used to desolder the entire board with little effort.

Ah yeah I missed they were talking about the station ones, beginners definitely don't need that.

How well does the pump work? A couple times I've had to desolder a connector or IC with lots of pins from a PCB and it's a painful process. I've always wanted to buy one of those, but I've seen lots of reports about getting clogged easily.

I rarely desolder, but I can easily justify a hundred bucks if I can avoid all that hours of work, where I'm also risking damaging an IC, lifting a pad, or something else...

might be worth trying a cheap solder sucker pen if you havent (the mechanical recoil type), significantly better than nothing

I tried different ones and this is clearly the winner.

Small, silent and reliable for cheap money.

I did some minor mods and use these de-makeup cotton pads because they are cheaper but so far a great experience.

Another important note: don't go cheaper here. These manual desoldering pumps (<30 bucks) are pretty bad and the other zd-... Arent worth the money.

I've used a couple of the ZD- ones and they are ok, but not very good quality. They don't really clog all that often, but they do fill up quickly and are very difficult and messy to clean out. They are also made of cheap plastic which will crack after a while exposed to the heat that it is. The tips for them are also low quality, and the solder will eventually dissolve them, making the hole in the middle of the tip larger and larger until it doesn't work anymore. All of them do technically work, but don't expect them to last.

I went and bought the "proper" Hakko FR-301 and it's an improvement in every way. Well worth the extra $100, and made me wonder why I ever wasted my time with the cheap versions. For whatever reason, the 100V Japan voltage one is about $50 cheaper than the 120V American one, so that's the one I got, but I already happened to have a source of 100VAC handy.

That was true for the older ZD-* models. The one I mentioned is in a different Ballpark (except you also meant specifically the ZD-8965).

The hakko is way better quality but beneath the price (i have no idea where you got one <300 bucks) there is another disadvantage: there is no Station and the hakko is heavy, so if you need to desolder for more than 30 mins I found it getting uncomfortable pretty quick.

Besides that the hakko is a good device. Too expensive for me though

My region has the Japan voltage version on Amazon for $210.

https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FR-301-Desoldering-Tool/dp/B07B...

I think the one I had was the ZD-917, which I don't even think anyone makes anymore. Assuming the ZD-8965 made some material improvements, it looks like it has the same style of reservoir with the internal spring, which is one of the main issues I had with it. I found that the spring would become eventually become trapped inside a large solder blob, making cleaning difficult. Then, you have to line up the filter and keep everything together while reinstalling it. For whatever reason, the tolerancing on mine made this especially difficult, and I eventually broke the glass tube when trying to reinstall it (replaced with an aluminium tube). Hakko version has no internal spring, and has enough tolerance to easily remove the reservoir.

The rubber grommet on the front also eventually lost its grip around the small brass tube that comes out from the iron, so it would leak and not suck as hard. The hakko version presses its grommet against a flat plate instead, so that doesn't happen.

Still, both are much better than the "squeeze bulb" style desoldering iron I had before them.

Would also recommend soldering wick - it’s just copper braid that you heat alongside the solder you’re removing and it ‘wicks’ away the solder.

Sometimes you need combination of desoldering gun, wick and also low melt solder and then those "tubes" that repel solder that you can wrap around the leg whilst heating it.

It's been awhile, but the best experience I've had desoldering ICs with many pins was with JBCs hot air extractors. They're little metal funnels you put around the component you want to desolder to contain hot air, with a tiny suction cup to lift the part once solder starts to melt.

JBCs stations are expensive though, but you should be able to use just the heat deflectors and a pair of tweezers, rather than a vacuum pump as long as you already have a hot air station.

With you overall, but given the toxicity of the fumes some quality / rated fume extraction might be the one area where cheap/self made item isn't worth it

Understatement.

If you're doing it a lot, then it's definitely worth making sure it works properly. If you're doing it occasionally, just make sure the area is well ventilated and you're not outright inhaling the fumes coming off the solder, and it's not likely to make any real difference to the health of your lungs.

"Well ventilated" on its own is completely insufficient. If you are soldering without any fan or extraction, you _will_ inhale fumes because you have to look right over your work when you solder, which is exactly where the fumes are.

In general, the danger with soldering fumes is not the average concentration in the room in which you're working over the duration of a session, it's inhaling the very high concentration of fumes right as the soldering happens.

We could debate how much damage this is going to do and whether it's worth worrying about, but there isn't really room to debate that ventilation alone is going to do absolutely nothing.

Well ventilated area + fan is probably okay, but you need the fan right next to your soldering iron or it needs to be a gigantic fan otherwise, again, you are just going to inhale most of those fumes.

I'd love agree with you... Unfortunately I bought some <50 bucks solder fume extractors and I'm pretty confident to say they don't work reliably.

They also contain a 120mm fans, a carbon filter and NO way to lead the fumes out oft the window.

However, you may be right that professional tools are the better choice in this case

I had to read your comment a few times to understand the confusion.

The issue is that you've concluded that a $50 fume extractor qualifies as spending real money, when in fact you're still well into the realm of cheap and crappy. What you're describing is quite literally a PC fan blowing into some foam. It's better than nothing, but you'd still be better off with a [real] fan and an open window.

Good fume extractors cost real money yet will seem very cheap if you are running the numbers while waiting for a chemotherapy appointment. JBC makes several, and they are FAR from the most expensive available:

https://www.jbctools.com/fume-extractor.html

Its your life, but IMO you really don't want to fuck around on this detail if you plan to do a lot of soldering. You might not care, but there could be people who love and rely on you to not try and to save a few hundred bucks on the thing that keeps you from premature death.

I've had bad experiences with USB irons, they generally don't have stellar compatibilty with USB power banks, and when your 60W iron can only draw 20W from your 100W power bank or PSU (but sometimes it works).

They even come with these compatibility wikis of what PSU or bank to buy.

They rely on compliant power sources, so just make sure you don't use bad ones that only pretend to follow the spec.

I simply cannot recommend a Pinecil + compatible 20A battery pack enough. Not being tied to a socket is amazing and the device is good to go in literally seconds!

Dunno, I had a TS80P, and bought a compatible Xiaomi powerbank and had a lot of issues. What sort of worked for me, is they make adapters for Makita batteries that have Weller connectors, those have a lot of juice and are far less fussy.

Try an INIU ;-)

A desoldering hand pump costs $5. Similiar shitty as a copper wig, works fine though.

I haven't soldered in a while, but I had really good luck with the metcal models. The tips auto match the proper temp, and don't require as much cleaning.

I can absolutely see how someone would hate soldering without good equipment.

Pinecil is a nice idea until it stops working due to a lack of strain relief for the power input or the clips snap and your tip falls out.

You need a Pinecil to repair your Pinecil and don't forget plenty of spare parts.

The cheapest Hakko iron (888?) works just fine for me, even for surface mount components.

>Desoldering Pump

I should have bought my Hakko fr301 way earlier than I did.

I'll steal your ZD-8965 recommendation :) Thanks!

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