Review: DuraTool desoldering station

mjnurney

we live as we dream. Alone.
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I've finally managed to get a solder station or more accurately a desolder station - which is far more important to me.

A Duratool desolder station (Farnell / RS)

80 wat , 240v, 24v desolder torch.

The torch can be replaced as its listed in the accessories in the farnell catalouge.

The kit cottons the following.

Pump unit (240v)
desolder torch
some files
3x tips
power lead.

Setup is easy and in 5 mins you are ready to go - set the temp and away you go. i have found that around 350c is good but it depends on the size of component and the type of track/pcb its on. Big tracks & big components = more temp. smaller stuff is easily done with a lower temp.

Flux is also very handy when removing stuff as it allows the solder to run away. You may find that the pins of components are often leaning on the side of solder hole, you can move the pin gently with the torch to centralise it.

so a test component was chosen and quickly removed to proved pics and then replaced - i was lazy and used the desolder tool to solder too.

total time - 5 minutes from removal to refit.

easy, simple and non destructive to the board if you use the correct sized tip (hole size)

mike.

Overall.

heating up speed - very quick.
suction - good.
ease of use - excellent, simple & quick.

i should of got one years ago.

mike.

Quick vid
http://youtu.be/KZSGdxo0CkQ
 

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Last edited:
That's a nice de-soldering station you have there Mike, the one I use is made by Pace and although its an old model, it still keeps on going. The amount of time I spent with a soldering iron and separate solder sucker or solder braid over the years must run into a heck of a lot of hours, these things really do make light work of duff part removal in comparison to the previous methods I tried.

Congratulations on getting your station and on the nice job you did trying it out (y)
 
thanks guys I'm looking forward to doing some more detailed work with the old girl :)
 
Could you PM me how much you paid for it ? their site appears to be down for maintainence so I cant check
 
Can I use this on cruddy pc motherboards? I have a medium collection of dead boards here, all of them have the same issue! failed capacitors. They all still work just not very well due to dodgy caps.
 
You should be able to, but on the ground side, you may need to also use a soldering iron to get enough heat to be able to melt the solder to be sucked away. The ground plane sucks a lot of the heat away very fast or it did on the motherboards I re-capped a year or two back :)
 
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