NEED: A Good Resonably Priced "Hot Air Gun For Soldering QFN Chips"

NEED: A Good Reasonably Priced "Hot Air Gun For Soldering QFN Chips"

There are so many brands out there I am not sure which ones are good ?

I would like to know which brands work well and will not bankrupt me.

Any suggestions or info is greatly appreciated.

There are a number of pretty good ones that are not very expensive. One that I've purchased and used with good results is the model that SparkFun sells on their hobbyist website - I think it is model 303D. Anyhow, it is very affordable and we have found it is easy to adapt nozzles from other brands to it also. I am not sure of the OEM that makes it, but it has held up well for the past ~2 years.

You may want to combine this with a small quartz heater worktop, so you can preheat the PCB assembly, then use the hot air gun to bring just the part in question up to reflow. But it is not needed for many repair/replacement jobs

Re: NEED: A Good Resonably Priced "Hot Air Gun For Soldering QFN Chips"

Thsnks you very much for your suggestion. I will go to their website and checkout their heat guns.

I will let you know how I make out.

Frank

ftsolutions said:

There are a number of pretty good ones that are not very expensive. One that I've purchased and used with good results is the model that SparkFun sells on their hobbyist website - I think it is model 303D. Anyhow, it is very affordable and we have found it is easy to adapt nozzles from other brands to it also. I am not sure of the OEM that makes it, but it has held up well for the past ~2 years.

You may want to combine this with a small quartz heater worktop, so you can preheat the PCB assembly, then use the hot air gun to bring just the part in question up to reflow. But it is not needed for many repair/replacement jobs

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radiotek said:

Thsnks you very much for your suggestion. I will go to their website and checkout their heat guns.

I will let you know how I make out.

Frank

Click to expand...

Sparkfun had only one heat gun which was the "Heaterizer XL-3000 Heat Gun" which is only 300 watts. They stated that it could be used for SMT resistors or capacitors and also said that they could not recommended it for SMT chips / Ic's..

Oh well, I guess I will keep on looking.

I don't know how you can be searching and not see it.
They have 123 of them in stock now.
Here is a direct link.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10706
It is not a 'heat gun', it is a hot air rework station.

Perhaps if you change how you search for things, you will have better luck!

I ordered a cheap Chinese made hot air / iron workstation from Ebay maybe 18 months ago. It was only $45. I took it apart when I got it to check for any obvious safety issues from cheap construction, but I didn't find any. It's worked well ever since with near daily use on the iron at least. I don't use the hot air as often, but it works when I need it. I'm an electronics tech and sometimes solder 8 hours in a day, so it's had a lot of use.

Looking at Ebay now, the cheap Chinese stations have gone up to $60-$75. The station I got is branded as Zeny. Soldering is misspelled on the front.

I still use Hakko tips on the iron. I had to slide two #6 internal tooth lockwashers over the heating element to compensate for the barrel of the iron being a smidge long for the tips. I don't know if it will last 15 years like the Hakko wands can, but it's holding up for now.

Oh I also use the Hakko wand holder. The cheap one is too light. If I didn't have the hakko stand, I would just figure a way to ballast the cheap one.

I searched again for "Heat Gun" and the only item that came up iwas the (Heaterizer XL-3000 Heat Gun), but when you search for "Hot Air Gun" your right is does come up.
The "Hot-air Rework Station 303D" looks like very nice hot air rework station but the price is a lttle on the high side at $114 plus shipping.
Anyway in the meantime I found a cheaper one that should be ok for the small amount of SMT work that I do.

Thank you for your help.