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I finally picked a heat gun over a soldering station for my first board rework
I had to choose between a $60 heat gun and a $150 soldering station for pulling a bad chip off an old Canon board, and I went with the heat gun since it was cheaper. It worked, but I scorched a nearby plastic connector on my second try and had to order a replacement. Curious if you all would've gone the other way for a first-timer, or if it just comes down to what you learned on.
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jakewhite11d ago
The thing nobody talks about with heat guns is the nozzle size. A standard gun throws a 1 inch wide blast of 700 degree air, and that's exactly why your plastic connector melted on try two. Solder stations let you swap to a 4mm nozzle and dial the temp down to 350, so the heat lands on the chip legs and not everything sitting an inch away. My first heat gun job on a Dreamcast controller board went fine, but the second one cost me a memory card slot because I had zero control over where the air went. A $10 narrow nozzle and a piece of kapton tape over the plastic bits would've saved you that replacement order, no new station needed.
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