Hot air soldering station recommendations

I am looking to get a hot air soldering station for some PCB SMD components. I found the one below. Any recommendations?

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858D clones are good enough, I use this model myself and no problem at all.

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This is probably a little much, but I got this model because I wanted the fan mounted remotely. I’d read advice from folks that said it makes it a little more comfortable to use.

So far this has been more useful to me for heat shrink tubing and melting stringing from 3D prints.

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Thanks @Rico & @Extra_Fox!

I am going to go with the 858d. It seemed to be one of the better rated clones on Amazon (it came to $47 after “coupon”). Good tip on cleaning 3d print strings!

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I can’t take credit for that, someone on the Prusa forums mentioned it, and boy does it ever beat scraping and sanding to remove those.

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You’ll make a good purchase, it does the job very well for smd soldering.
One advice, when you put the gun back on its base you’ll hear the fan blowing a moment. This is to cool down the heating element and the gun until safe temperatures are reached. So before shutting down the station I strongly suggest to first wait for the fan to stop blowing in order to prevent any heat damage.

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Wait are you talking about the excess spider webby strands removal or actual service finishing?

Thanks for the tip Rico! I can’t wait to practice

Yeah, the thin little stringy ones. Just run it up to 400F and it melts those right away. It can smooth out bigger things too if you’re careful and patient. Of which I am neither.

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Arrived yesterday

Initial impressions are good. Handle is a bit bigger then I thought it would be. The accessories are generic cheap but work in a pinch. I was able to desolder an MCU successfully took about 10 minutes to get the chip off at 360 degrees and clean up the solder with a wick. Not bad for my first usage of this type of soldering station. Hopefully soldering the chip on with a stencil and some paste goes smoothly.

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Nice. I think I’m going to try mine with a USB C port I need to attach. I understand it’s possible with drag solder, but I think I may not be coordinated enough to manage that.

Got one myself… just a word of warning:

  • don’t let your guard down with these stations
  • if the fan fails it keeps heating up - the metal starts glowing red and plastic starts melting
  • if this happens keep your nerve and quickly toggle the power off

Stations that have the blower in the main unit are not thought to be prone to this. Because of this issue I’d argue against using the magnetic switch-off and in fact I’d argue against putting the soldering gun on the holder - without first switching the power off manually. My holder isn’t even mounted to the main unit.

Thankfully I haven’t had any accidents myself; the information is from a report about a similar incident online.

Thanks for the heads up.

I couldn’t justify spending more for how much planing on using it. It did come with an “extra” heating element. I think that speaks to the overall quality. It works does a good job but there are some cheap parts. For safety, in general, I don’t leave the work bench until all equipment is powered off and unplugged (or at least power strip is off). I also follow Rico’s advice above to let the unit fully cool down.