Build Your Own Hot Air Flow Soldering Iron

Well, it's no secret that posting around here has been pretty slow lately. I do have excuses though - first the trip to San Diego, then much sleep afterwards, then a trip to the beach before school started, then school started on Wednesday, then catchup. So, here we are, back ready for more robot lovin'.

Today's cool link would be the "build your own hot air flow soldering iron" howto article I saw. Having used a nice reflow station it's pretty tough going back to my lousy iron in the shop. A system like this is perfect for desoldering chips from existing circuit boards, or cleaning up SMT boards after you've used a standard iron on them. Just run a bit of flux over the pads and blow some hot air on them - they'll look just like a machine did them.

The guy in this article used copper tubing and some welding wire to create his heating element, and some silicone tubing as insulation and to bring in the air from a cheap air pump. Pretty nifty. Build one and let me know how it goes!