I’m looking for recommendations on a good desolder gun… Ideally something more affordable then the Hakko 250$ one. I’ve started doing some old electronics for fun with a lot more through hole… Needing to do things like replace a bunch of caps at once. Any suggestions?
Hey there,
There’s two (or maybe trhee?) budget rework stations that you can obtain from ebay or alibaba for around 60 or 70€ (or USD). For exmaple, on ebay look for “862D rework station”. The manufacturer printed on those stations varies, but they usually ain’t too bad. I’ve done many many electronics repais with those simple cheap stations.
There’s also stations for around 30 or 40€, but people I know who bought those were not as happy and the stations didn’t last too long.
Ofcourse, they ain’t as good as the hakko, JBC or Weller hot air rework station. But, still, they do the job.
Yeah I’ve got a hot air station. I was looking for a vacuum desoldering gun
Hey there,
Oh, I’m sorry, seems like I didn’t read properly. Sorry.
I don’t know of any vacuum desoldering gun that is significantly cheaper than that and works properly. There’s those 100€ (or USD) desolder guns you can get everywhere on ebay, but I have no idea if they actually properly work…
I recently picked up a ZD-915 for $130 and so far it works great. There’s a lot of reviews of this particular tool on YouTube and I recommend watching a couple to get an idea of the good and the bad. I only used a heated/unheated manual sucker before so I don’t have a lot to compare it too. Seems to be the best one for the price.
If your budget is $250 - $300, I think the Hakko ones might be better. I’m hoping to get at least 2 years out of mine.
Hope that helps 
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You can get a Hakko 470d for around $150 (USD) on eBay or cheaper if you don’t mind rebuilding it. I use an old one at work and had to replace the heat element in the iron a couple of times (the person who used it before me wasn’t good to it) but its easy and if you don’t mind cleaning the spring and running a tool through it pretty often (depends on how much you use it) it will pull solder out of through hole really easily. I prefer hot air and wick for SMD but I have used it (carefully) on larger components and the smallest nozzle if someone has really caked it on there.
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I have one of the ZD-915’s and it’s been faultless, untill the other day, when I switched it on and it kept power cycling, but worked fine when I unscrewed the gun, I checked the heater resistance and getting 1 ohm I thought there was a short in the heater, unable to find a replacement element I had to get a replacement gun.
When that arrived it was still power cycling, checked the element on the new one and that also read 1 ohm, so either faulty out the box or 1 ohm is ok, forgetting it’s only running on 18v, I am more experienced in Mains powered elements.
So set about pulling it apart, I found two issues to note.
One the reason for the power cycling when the gun was connected was the abomination they made soldering the wires onto the back of the socket, the middle pin had such an enormous blob of solder on it, it had eventually worked it’s way through the heat shrink on one of the other pins, I had to pull all the wires off the socket and re do them all.
The other issue I found was that some of the wires were pulled so tight around the metal case of the power supply that it would be a sure thing that a short would happen there eventually as well.
Spent some time rewiring it with longer wires to make it safer.
Other than that it’s an excellent item and at £75 in the UK a good price as well.
Paul