I am almost brand new to surface mount tech, although I am a retired Certified Electronics Technician with over 40 years of bench tech troubleshooting experience as well as some design experience (all on audio and visual products). I have, so far, designed and produced two bass guitar preamps. One is an onboard preamp and the other is a pedal version of the onboard one. Both use up to nine or 10 surface mount components. I initially tried to solder them to the boards using a conventional iron but I did not like the results. So I decided to significantly improve my methodology, incorporating a hot plate (from Adafruit) and this hot air workstation. I also got two stencils made, and use ChipQuick solder paste (the best I could find). I had started practicing with the gun on one of those inexpensive smd practice kits and I have to say the gun works delightfully well. It is fun to watch the solder heat up and liquify without the use of an iron. I just use tweezers once the solder has melted to remove components. To place them, I first put solder paste on the pads, place the components, then heat them using either just the hot plate or a combination of hot plate and hot air gun. Works great, works fast, and the boards look much cleaner and neater compared to the results of just using an iron. Also, much less risk of frying a component. I am very satisfied with this air gun and it is highly likely that you will be too! Read more
This is my first experience soldering SMD components, so I didn't want to spend a lot. This hot air gun definitely does the job. You'll want to use the smallest nozzle and turn the air speed down to 1-2; initially I had too much air and things went all over the place. After a bit of practice, I am able to easily remove and replace 0804 and SOT-23 devices. 0402 is a bit harder, but those are possible too. Overall, I'm quite happy with the Toolour heat gun, it's excellent value for the money, and the included tools are useful too. Read more
I have been using this tool for a couple of months and I have found many uses for it so far. The tool works good and the heating is very fast. The temperature and fan speed are both adjustable. I love the feature that when you put the hand piece back on the stand the fan continues to run until the unit cools down. Then it goes on stand-by and is ready to go again as soon as you pick it up. This is great for heat shrink tubing. You never have to worry about setting the tubing or surrounding components on fire with the right temperature setting. The different sized nozzles are helpful too. I have even used this to remove labels and it works great. The quality is good at this price point and so far it has performed well. I will see how it works after one year-if it lasts that long. Read more
This is a fantastic product for those who work on electronic devices like phones, tablets, circuit boards, and small projects where a larger heat gun would be too much. I love the heat range this product has, which means that I don't have to worry much about over heating a particular area. I also love the attachments that come with it, which allows me to focus the heat to a specific spot. The other tools that come with this product work great too. The wire snips are perfect and so are the tweezers and the solder sucker tool. I would definitely recommend this product to anyone. Read more
This thing will melt a lot of stuff. It works really good for removing charging ports and HDMI ports on consoles... especially when the melting point is so high on some of the original solder on consoles. I have no complaints at all... other than I cannot pronounce the name of it. The price was great too! I didn't want to spend big bucks on something I don't do that often, but this thing fit the ticket nicely. Read more
After about a month of usage, the product stopped heating. This is the 2nd one I've ordered hoping the 1st was just defective. Do not recommend purchasing. Read more
The rework station works pretty well for my needs, especially since it's able to output a good amount of heat to warm up the solder with flux. It also comes with extra accessories surprisingly which is a positive. It's pretty easy to use and I'm able to use it to resolder and fix an SMD. Read more
Its like the professional ones we have at work, but for a starter home kit its actually pretty decent quality. Read more
