alt Hacker NewsHow well does the pump work? A couple times I've had to desolder a connector or IC with lots of pins from a PCB and it's a painful process. I've always wanted to buy one of those, but I've seen lots of reports about getting clogged easily.
I rarely desolder, but I can easily justify a hundred bucks if I can avoid all that hours of work, where I'm also risking damaging an IC, lifting a pad, or something else...
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I tried different ones and this is clearly the winner.
Small, silent and reliable for cheap money.
I did some minor mods and use these de-makeup cotton pads because they are cheaper but so far a great experience.
Another important note: don't go cheaper here. These manual desoldering pumps (<30 bucks) are pretty bad and the other zd-... Arent worth the money.
might be worth trying a cheap solder sucker pen if you havent (the mechanical recoil type), significantly better than nothing
I've used a couple of the ZD- ones and they are ok, but not very good quality. They don't really clog all that often, but they do fill up quickly and are very difficult and messy to clean out. They are also made of cheap plastic which will crack after a while exposed to the heat that it is. The tips for them are also low quality, and the solder will eventually dissolve them, making the hole in the middle of the tip larger and larger until it doesn't work anymore. All of them do technically work, but don't expect them to last.
I went and bought the "proper" Hakko FR-301 and it's an improvement in every way. Well worth the extra $100, and made me wonder why I ever wasted my time with the cheap versions. For whatever reason, the 100V Japan voltage one is about $50 cheaper than the 120V American one, so that's the one I got, but I already happened to have a source of 100VAC handy.