[Elecraft] Desoldering and installing the KX1 3080 option

[Kevin B. G. Luxford]

Hi guys,

The Hakko 808 looks very much to me like the Denon Instruments Co. Ltd.
SC-7000 desoldering tool.  I wonder if there is some tie up between
Hakko and Denon?  Anyway the point of this post is that I find the
SC-7000 excellent for desoldering stuff on PC boards.  Continuous
vacuum, and controllable tip temperature are the two major features of
the SC-7000.  Do be quick when using it, as lingering too long can
result in a copper pad being lifted off the board.

However, it is not so good on glowbug stuff where components are
soldered to tag strips or tube bases, and the volume of solder to be
removed is much greater than on the typical PC board.  Under these
circumstances the vacuum tends to die because the slots in the plastic
separator in front of the filter get quickly clogged.  Then the nozzle
fills with solder.

A desoldering tool that handles the glowbug stuff a bit better is the
very inexpensive GC Electronics "Solder Popper" (about USD37.00).  I
also have one of these.  It consists of a manual desoldering pump
mounted on a soldering iron with a hollow tip.  Simple, inexpensive, and
it works well.

FWIW!

73
Kevin
VK3DAP / ZL2DAP
-- 
  Kevin B. G. Luxford
  kbgluxford at fastmail.fm