Duratool Desoldering Station
I don't know why I waited so long to get one of these desoldering stations, it's such a time saving tool and it can also save a lot of perfectly good IC's from being destroyed during the removal process. Until now I have used a solder sucker which works ok but if you're desoldering a lot of IC's it was quicker to just cut them out and then remove the pins and clean the holes.
So on to the un-boxing:
It's a sizable heavy box and on opening you only see the very thin instruction booklet.
Unpacking and what's included is the base station, the solder/desolder gun, two power leads (Uk & European), holster with sponge, two spare nozzles, four spare filters and three nozzle cleaners.
Assembling is very straight forward, plug in the iron, screw on the air pipe and clip on the holster.
The Desoldering station is set up ready to go. Thinking about what to desolder first I thought I could remove the ULA from the failed Electron PCB from my earlier project Two more Electron repairs.
I thought I should try a different IC before trying to remove the ULA so I removed the 6502 processor.
The process was simple but I did check with a pair of pliers that each pin was loose before trying to lift the IC. There is a danger of lifting out the plated through hole. I then used my 6502 tester to test the chip - working ok. In the past I would have cut the chip out - one 6502 saved for re-use.
Second go at removing a chip and I saved the OS ROM! I could read it easily in my EPROM programmer and it returned the correct check sum (FC6A). The PCB looks ok after the removal.
Now to remove the ULA. Everything looks ok and it lifts out easily but as can be seen I lifted a track under the ULA, the track still had a small amount of solder attached to one of the ULA pins between the part and the PCB where I couldn't see.
The ULA has what looks like liquid stains underneath. I cleaned them off and added some turned pin sockets so I could plug it into one of my Electron to test. Needless to say it didn't work - I'm guessing, but I think that Electron has suffered some water damage in it's past life. Anyway it confirms my earlier diagnosis that the ULA was faulty.
Since I damaged the board I thought I'd continue to practice desoldering and remove the rest of the IC's.
I tested all the 74 series chips with the EPROM programmer and they all tested ok. The tester only caters for generic types and not LS. ALS etc. but at least it tests the basic functionality. All the IC's will find there way into my next Electron build.
The desolder station is one of the best gadgets I've used for a long time and it's good to know I can now remove IC's without damaging them. Thumbs up.