On 9/5/06, Wouter van Ooijen wrote: > > From your experience is SMT soldering just perfect > > with hot-air station? I do not think so. You need practise. Some of the production girls are really good at soldering using normal soldering stations (Hakko or Weller). They can remove and solder many kinds of components without using any hot air... > if so, my answer is: no idea, I use my hot-air *only* for removing > things. > Interesting. I used hot air to blow aways all kind of components but I also used it to solder some QFN parts (I will say it is quite difficult so no guarantee of success). I personally do like to use hot air to remove single IC component because of the density of the board. (I do not like to blow the surrounding components away. I used the method of Mark Rages most of the time for SMD components. Long time ago I was using medical needles for DIP components removing (so that the IC will still be okay). Nowadays, I do not have the luxury to work with large components any more. However most likely I will simple cut the legs and throw the IC away if I need to deal with this situation. I might try to use solder wick if the IC is really expensive. Regards, Xiaofan -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist