LRT 8858 Micro Hot Air Station SMD Rework Desoldering Digital Heat Gun

This heat gun is the tool I have been looking to find for years. It combines a heat source for shrink tubing as well as it's advertised use for SMD soldering and repair. I have, over the last few months, used it extensively. One of the great features is that when it is placed in the stand, it turns off and the air is increased to full blast to cool it off immediately. Haven't burnt myself once. Only problem the resting stand is a bit small and needs to be mounted on a bigger platform to keep it stable. Small price to pay for such a useful tool. Air flow is adjustable, so you don't blow all the placed part off the board. I got some heat proof tape, also sold here at Amazon, to localize the heat to the portion of the PCB of interest. It heats to operating temperature within 20 seconds. This is one of those "Truly can't be without" tools! Read more

This works amazing. I use this to do surface mount soldering and it works amazing. Temperature controls works great Air flow is amazing. Durability is amazing. I even see some YouTubers use this too. I recommend them so much. Great job Read more

Read the instructions. You can’t run the tiny tube at max temp and “wind” at 10 (body melts) and you can’t just pull the plug when you’re done (body melts) because it has to run a cooling cycle. It heats up very fast and has worked great the few times I’ve used it so far. Read more

As a retired EE who has been designing, debugging and reworking PCBAs since 1979 - I was blown away! This little unit is Perfect for my "weekend warrior" surface mount needs (and heatshrinking duties). Excellent quality, quiet airflow, intuitive temp control adjustment, perfect size for my mostly-cluttered workbench - and thoughtful automatic cooldown when using the front panel OFF control (not the main power switch). This is FULL FEATURED for a simple and very inexpensive tool. I have no idea how long it will last, but the overall build quality (excellent cords and connectors), responsiveness of the heater and temp display when adjusting temperature - along with the automatic cooldown cycle when turning OFF, tells me that it will last long enough to satisfy me that this was money well-spent. Whoa — this deserves six stars. I need to add something to my original review. This unit comes with a stand for the hot-air pencil, and it turns out there’s a magnet in that stand. When you set the tool down, it automatically drops into cooldown/standby mode. That means it protects the heating element, prevents accidental scorching of anything on the bench, and remembers my temperature setting so it immediately resumes when I pick it up again. An unexpected and genuinely delightful feature — especially when working on multiple parts and needing to set the tool down between steps. Read more

Works. Heats up quickly. But the controls are cumbersome and the power chord comes off easily. If the power unit was integrated in the holder the setup would be less messy. Good value for the money. Read more

If you want to actually do work with this, don't bother. Can't output enough heat to actually melt solder. If you try, it will start to melt itself and smoke. I had to submerge the thing in water to get it to stop smoking out my house, as it was still smoking for several minutes after unplugging. Absolutely useless. From a quick feel test at 400c it's definitely not accurate and not pushing that heat out the nozzle as it was still quite safe and comfortable when pointed at my skin. But that heat was being generated because it melted itself. Read more

So I ordered this tool a few days ago, and got it today - and I set out to try it. I had never used a hot-air soldering tool before in my 52 years, but I needed something more than the soldering irons and stations I do own in order to remove some SMD components from some boards I'm salvaging parts from. If there is anything to say bad to say about it, it would be that a small instruction booklet might be helpful. As it was, the tool itself (well, it's controller) had clear and easy-to-read English-language instructions, and I was able to get things up and running in a few minutes after putting it all together. One thing that was a tiny bit confusing was the fact that you have to pick the thing up, before it starts working; it has some kind of built-in motion sensor that starts it up (even after you turn on the controller and set the temperature and fan speed); it came up to temperature very quickly. When you set it down, and leave it for a bit, it goes into a "cool-down" mode - turning off (I think) the heater and running the fan at high speed to cool the tool down; when you pick it up again, it switches back to the speed you set, and brings it back up to temperature again. Once it cools down all the way, it shuts itself off - but pick it up again, and away you go! I liked that as a nice safety aspect (though part of me would like to also see it run all the time, so you could do "hands free" work with it as a heat source - but maybe that's a bit dangerous; leave that to a regular hot-air gun... The tools and tips it came with were adequate for my immediate needs, but I might pick up some others later. I liked the tweezers - very useful for picking off SMD components. I didn't know what the other tool was until I re-read the product description; I still don't know if that tool is only meant for SMD components or not (probably). I'll have to try it out later. With the tool, I was able to remove parts I couldn't possibly do with a soldering iron; the smallest part was an SMD resistor (I think); I'm not sure of the size - 803? Not the smallest, but smaller than a grain of rice, certainly. The largest component I removed was a signal transformer the size of a hockey puck - I was just barely able to dump enough heat into all of the pins to remove it from the board, though some of the pins stuck in the board and came out of the plastic bobbin - and I had to remount them and reesolder the coil wires to them. So it has limits, and really that part was well beyond what it was probably designed to handle. But that was the thing - I could dump enough heat into a large enough area to easily and quickly remove just about anything else; some things I had to add a bit of flux and/or extra solder to get it it melt and stay melted for removal - but overall, I could do a much better job with such parts than I ever could with my largest soldering iron (an old 40 watt unit; I also have one of those old Weller 100+ watt "guns" - but that would be real overkill). Finally, the price was great, and the tool itself was well built - I really do with I had bought one of these a long time ago (though when I was younger, such a tool wasn't really in the budget). So if you're hesitant to buy one of these for something you think might need it - don't. Buy it. You'll really wonder how you ever did things without it. Read more

It did the job, but the controls are pretty unintuitive. For example, the menu resets itself if you don’t keep pressing through within 5 seconds. There was also a permanent burnt plastic smell when in use. I can’t tell if this is from some leftover packaging that ended up inside, or if it’s a manufacturing defect. Read more