16 September 2019 / tuesdaytooling

Tooling Tuesday: Cheap Desoldering Pump

A "proper tool" this week, no not me! A cheap desoldering pump that I purchased from CPC.

Main

I bought this desoldering pump for a blog post, and to desolder components from old boards...Then I forgot to write a blog post.

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I love soldering, and yeah no matter how much practice I have, I will make a mistake and have to desolder the mistake.

Typically I will use desoldering wick/braid and a desoldering pump where I need to press a button to pull the solder away using a vaccuum. The problem with the pump is that I need to heat the solder with an iron in one hand, and the pump in the other. It can get tricky.

So when I heard of a desoldering pump that also had a soldering iron element...well I had to get one.

So what is it?

A Duratool 230V Desoldering Pump for £4.79 (inc VAT) is on the face of it quite a bargain.

I paid my money and awaited delivery!

Spec
When it arrived the unit looked good. It merges the desoldering pump and the familiar spring loaded trigger, with a mains powered, 40W, non temperature controlled iron. It also fits in my Antex soldering iron stand, which is handy as the desoldering pump does not come with a stand.

I wanted to test the desoldering pump and so I plugged it in and picked a few old circuit boards from Sky TV boxes, which are handy for 3.5" hard drives, I then started harvesting components
The iron heats up really quickly and to use the iron all I needed to do was press the plunger to prime the trigger. Then I placed the hollow tip of the iron over a rather beeft solder joint. I wiggled the iron around the joint to transfer the heat to the joint. Then I pressed the trigger and it pulled the solder off...well most of it.

Finding it a struggle to desolder a component from a board? Add a little fresh solder to the joint and try again. Some old solder joints are crusty or soldered with crap solder. Adding a little fresh solder will make the job a lot easier.

For solder joints that are beefy, old solder or just poorly soldered you will need to hit the joint a few times to pull all the solder off. Each time I primed the plunger and it pulled the solder off.

So is it any good?

For less than £5 yeah! This is a great tool for those of us that can't afford those super duper desoldering pumps. If you need to do a little desoldering then this is a great tool. For big projects or if you need to desolder lots of components, then perhaps a more expensive desoldering pump is needed. But for most of us this will do the job rather well.

So how do I empty it?

Yeah it has to be emptied! And you need to be careful. The unit can be unscrewed (make sure the spring is not primed) and the solder bits emptied out. Just make sure the desoldering pump is off and cooled down otherwise you will hurt yourself.