I used the electronics bench sunday morning to solder some parts while I was waiting for the Amateur Radio committee meeting to start and noticed that the area doesn’t have a hot air rework station.
I would suggest the addition of this tool to one of the soldering stations. They are pretty cheap (at least the chinese ones) now days (~$100-$150) and are very useful for reworking smd components.
Hakko 470-2 Desoldering Tool.
http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/tls/4976336065.html
This hit Craigslist last night
Robert Davidson
I am not sure, but that Hakko, doesn’t look like the type of rework station I am talking about. It looks like the connection between the box and the handset is ‘electrical’.
The stations I am used to use very hot air (300-400 deg c) to perform the rework. You control the temp and the air flow. I was thinking something like this Example Hot Air Rework station
We are coordinating with Hakko USA to get 4-6 new soldering stations and a couple of desoldering systems. A hot air station has also been discussed as a part of the tools they could outfit us with.
We do have a hot air system somewhere but it keeps getting moved around.
@Robert_Davidson, FYI Rick showed us how to determine genuine Hakko gear from Chinese fakes. The craigslist item is not likely a real unit.