My buddy the electronics tech changed my mind about reflowing solder

I was over at my friend Dave's place last week fixing a dead Xbox One. He's been doing board repairs for 10 years. He told me most of those YouTube reflow tutorials are garbage because they don't address the actual cracked joints. He showed me a $35 hot air station and said to use flux and a microscope instead of a heat gun. That conversation hit different because I've been blaming bad solder for months when it was really poor prep. Has anyone else switched from a heat gun to a hot air station and seen better results?

3 comments

3 Comments

reed.eva28d ago

Damn, wait a minute. A $35 hot air station? For real? I've been over here thinking you had to drop at least a couple hundred on a quality one to even touch a board. That's a game changer right there. And the microscope part, yeah I can see that, you gotta actually see what you're doing instead of just melting everything in sight with a heat gun like a caveman. I've wrecked a few boards myself just going in hot and heavy, thinking I was saving time. Makes me wonder how many perfectly good consoles I've tossed just because I skipped the prep and the right gear.

jamies4522d ago

Yeah, the cheap stations work fine if you just take your time. Get some flux and practice on dead boards first, you'll save yourself a lot of headaches.

mason_ward28d ago

Ain't that the truth about tossing good boards?