Was a hot air skeptic until I fixed a laptop motherboard with one last week

I always figured hot air rework stations were overkill for my bench. I used a soldering iron for everything, even stubborn through-hole joints. Then a buddy brought over a Dell laptop with a cracked BGA chip on the GPU. I borrowed his Quick 861DW, hit it with 350C for about 45 seconds, and the thing booted right up. Has anyone else avoided buying a hot air station for too long and regretted it?

3 comments

3 Comments

ellis.rose1mo ago

Spent two years trying to reflow a busted Xbox 360 with a heat gun aimed at the board in my driveway. Melted a capacitor and a good chunk of my patience before I caved and bought a proper station. That little Quick unit paid for itself on the first job, no joke. But the real kicker is I started using it for everything after that, even shrinking heat shrink tubing because it's faster than a lighter. Now my soldering iron mostly sits in the drawer collecting dust unless I'm doing through-hole stuff. Kinda makes me wonder how much other gear I'm stubbornly avoiding that would actually save me time and headaches down the road.

elizabetha9228d ago

Isn't it funny how we'll spend two years wrestling with garbage tools just to avoid spending one afternoon learning a new machine? You basically reflowed that Xbox with spite and a heat gun, that's practically a rite of passage for any hardware tinkerer. I'm picturing you out in the driveway looking like a mad scientist melting stuff and getting more frustrated by the minute. But now you've got a fancy station that does the job in ten minutes flat and you're using it on everything including your lunch leftovers. I swear the next thing you'll tell me is you bought a torque wrench just to tighten the lid on your pickle jar.

anderson.gavin1mo ago

Funny how that works, isn't it? You fight doing something the hard way for ages, then one tool makes you wonder what else you're making harder than it needs to be. I catch myself doing the same thing with all kinds of stuff around the house, using a hammer on something that really just needs a screwdriver.