recomended desolderun gun

I'm thinking on getting a good desoldering gun (sucker).
I've seen that manufacters like ABECO have a wide variety of them, rangin $5 to $30.
somo of them are antistatic, some of them not.
some of them use nozzles and neoprene washer. Others, nozzles with vacuum ring.

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which one would you choose??

Thank you!

You mean a manual vaccum right? Not one of those air powered ones?

Get a soldering vacuum bulb (it's a rubber bulb thing)thing rather than one of the metal spring-loaded things. Trust me. The recoil on some of the solder vacuums is horrible and smacks the board every time it goes off so you can't keep it on the same point, especially when you are soldering small pins and pads. It jerks out of position before anything gets sucked up.

Or you could go to radio shack and get their desoldering iron. It's an iron with a pipe going down the tip and a rubber bulb at the end. Easy to use and works real well. It uses a rubber bulb so no recoil. Trust me, that recoil makes it impossible to use on small pads, especially if you lost the solder joint melted flat into the hole.

If you REALLY want one, I'll just sell you mine (hell, I might just give it to you). I can't use it anyway. It's one of these: all metal, fancy-looking, anti-static, teflon tip, all the trimmings, and impossible to use on smaller solder joints.
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i have an antistatic one (didn't really know until now??!) it works fine but can get clogged if you try to suck up VERY large amounts of solder, and if you open it you will find lots of annoying lead powder that has been left behind, you should get the one that YOU think is best but they all do the same thing really.

as dknguyen says they can jump and ruin thing if the pins are small.

Hope this Helps

I thought on gettin a bulb one. The desolderin iron, with a special tip attached to a sucking bulb. It seems more efficient, but is more expensive and also it requires swapping soldering if you need to solder at the same time.

For $30? Go for the desoldering iron from radio shack.
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Costs half as much and works way better. Or you could just go for the bulb. It's already hard to get the large tip of the vacuum on a smaller solder pad, but the recoil makes it impossible to use. It might work for large through-hole circuits, but smaller? No way.

Those vacuums seemed to be designed for huge things like globs of solder that can form when soldering wire together. if you do find a bulb that is anti-static (I don't think I have seen one or I haven't noticed) tell me.

ZIGGY: Lead dust forms inside? LEAD DUST?! I could never desolder anything with my vacuum to find out. I thought it would just solidify into solder beads that you then scrape away from the chamber walls...but DUST?!

what do you mean by recoil? sorry, I'm Spanish and don't know what it is.
Also, I have no access to that famous radio shack

They use a spring inside the desolder vacuum to move a plunger.When the spring fires, it shakes the vacuum around. This moves the tip away from the solder pad and makes the tip hit the board so you can't keep it still.

Recoil is how a gun or cannon jerks, kicks back, flies backwards when you shoot it.

damn, I saw no other vacumm pump appart from recoil powered ones...
In my local store they have a cool and good quality desoldering iron but cost $45... and it has the disavantage that you need two irons to solder at same time...

I wonder where I could find those bulb vacuum..

I kinda like the plunger type, granted it does take getting used to, and is fiddly on small parts, so for small and delicate I use desolder braid or "wick".
I always found the squeeze bulb type to clog in the nozzle very easily, or spill little bits all over the place.

I have had my plunger one, the same as you listed, but the old blue coloured "Soldapult" model for well over 10 years. The trick, I think, to using a plunger type is to have the PCB held in place somehow, so both hands are free to work, then there is very little bouncing around.

Here is a link to desoldering wick to show what I mean:
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I've also been using the wick, or braid lately. In front of me I have one made by Hakko, and one made by Velleman. There are several sizes available. I have also been annoyed at times by the 'recoil' of the spring loaded things. Look for it where you buy your solder.
Regards,
Robert

I'll second the wick approach. I've got the RS solder sucker and it doesn't work nearly as well as the solder wick stuff.

for a lot of stuff, I use a hot air station. really great for desoldering smt stuff.

patroclus said:

damn, I saw no other vacumm pump appart from recoil powered ones...
In my local store they have a cool and good quality desoldering iron but cost $45... and it has the disavantage that you need two irons to solder at same time...

I wonder where I could find those bulb vacuum..

Click to expand...

It should be right next to the spring vacuum. It's pretty common.

dknguyen said:

ZIGGY: Lead dust forms inside? LEAD DUST?! I could never desolder anything with my vacuum to find out. I thought it would just solidify into solder beads that you then scrape away from the chamber walls...but DUST?!

Click to expand...

Yeah, i use mine a lot, it's easy with a bit of practice but for small stuff or surface mount it sucks, excuse the pun.lol

99.99% of the solder forms a large block but lots and lots of powder gathers on the spring and the inside, you need to remove it after a while.

also the wick stuff is pretty good, but you have to constantly keep buying it, or am i just not using it right??!

Now I don't know what to do
I might consider buy a desolderin iron for $45 and an inexpensive vacuum pump (recoil one, as I see no bulb ones here). The iron is pretty good when you want to desolder a lot of things as you don't need to remove the tip for sucking, thus making it very efficient. I suppose.

I also use braid, but when there's quite lot of solder to suck it is not good. First, I remove with pump, then, use braid. But I mainly want it for DIP kind componets (also some superficial, but braid is great for that so far)

Is a soldering iron really worth it??
I found a desoldering iron for $45 which serves also as a regular iron with appropiatte tip. It is 25W iron. It has several desoldering tips. the smaller is 1,7mm, with the "hole" being 0,7mm. And the biggest is 3,8mm.

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Do you think is is better option than just getting an antistatic recoil vacuum pump for $15?? to use with my regular soldering iron?

I think a desoldering iron should be better and more confortable, but I never used one.. any experiences please??

I didn't know JBC made those. Anyways, you can tell that I really hate the spring-type vacuums, since it's absolutely useless for me. You can probably guess what I would say.

Don't you have any little electronic store around? It seems to me that the lower end the electronic store, the more likely they are to have the bulb. Or are all these things you are looking at from online stores?

No, I usually go to two local stores, and as they're far from home, depending on where I go, I go to one or another. But they are very similar. They work with JBC, and I've seen what I said here.. I will ask if the have a bulb one, but I think not..