De-soldering

Yesterday I have been de-soldering (or desoldering) a lot. I use for this a special soldering iron with a pump in it. I really advise you to buy one too when you do a lot of de-soldering. It is so much easier with such a tool. You have a 'free hand' to hold the circuit-board which you else need to use to hold the pump and they simply 'suck' better, haha, because the tin is still fluid. These de-soldering irons don't have to be expensive. Mine was like 10 euro (with shipping).

A free hint from me is that you wait 1-2 seconds so all the tin is fluid and then suck it away. To know if it is all fluid I press against the pins in one direction until it moves. I mostly use this technique with IC's. Althought the de-solder iron is awesome it does not work on all circuit-boards. Some of the newer circuit-boards have very precise holes and so little room between the pins and the board, it is difficult to get the tin away from there when you fail the first time. Perhaps a reader has a hint how to do that?, please comment.

So say goodbye to this one:

And say hello to your new friend when it comes to de-soldering:

The electronic items that I collected are a lot and some are very nice. I took them from old phone circuit-boards, old computer mice and some other things. Here is the most of it (click-able):

During the de-soldering I broke some parts, which isn't nice, but it is a nice chance to see how the components look from the inside.

Here is a diode (click-able):

And here is a relay from the inside (click-able):