@Stuntman
Thank you for the reply. I had looked at the CSI825a. I agree, I am looking for a hot air rework machine and not a soldering station.

I also see one of these are a adjustable heat gun. Shrinking heat shrink tubing and heating up a part when trouble shooting would be handy.

 

I would look at the Atten 858D hot air rework station that Dave Jones tested and there are great mod threads at the eevblog...
Sorry but this is the best I can offer as a suggestion cause most Chinese clones have their own issues with each different unit .. Unless you spend the money on quality unit..

 

The 898D unit we mentioned is basically the same unit as that 858 but also has a standard tip too, and it works with Haako style tips.

Don't cheap out on clone tips, get the real Haako ones.

 

I have pretty much settled on the 898D. I saw a review of the 899D which has a extra switch and a more interesting color scheme, but I haven't found one for sale yet.

 

I just ordered a 898D. I will post a review of it after I have used it for a while.

 

I just ordered a 898D. I will post a review of it after I have used it for a while.

Great and can't wait to see..

 

I just ordered a 898D. I will post a review of it after I have used it for a while.

I got mine thru EBay, whatever vendor was the cheapest.

I believe you will be happy with the results. Good luck.

 

OK, I received a 898D this morning and after 30 minutes of playing with it I give it a big thumbs up.

I had never used a hot air station before so I set the temp to 350 C and the air flow dial at 50%. A scrap PCB, a drop of flux, and it melted and flowed the solder quite well. I soldered a few different sized SMD parts with the soldering iron, let the whole thing cool off and then hit it with the hot air. Each part came off very easily.

The soldering iron came with a 3/32 inch round tip installed, (not my favorite size or shape) and a bag of other sized tips. I wanted to find out how well the iron held temperature. I took some blank PCB, laid the tip down on the board and soldered a 3/8" wide path along the edge of the PCB. I held the speed consistent and the path width and solder thickness was also consistent; temperature control was good. I then put a similar tip on my Weller WES51 and reproduced the same test. They both pretty much performed the same.

Heat shrink worked great.

I am very satisfied with this station, especially at the price I paid. The controls work well, the auto cool off for the hot air works well. I would recommend it to a beginner or a pro.

 

Update

I have used the 898D, off and on, over a two week period. I have mainly used it to desolder small pitch ICs (.037" spacing or larger). It works freakin great!!

- Today I replaced an SOT package four times on the same PCB. One of the pins was not used and had just a pad (no trace to hold the pad in place). After four remove and replaces, the PCB traces showed no signs of de-lamination. The lone pad did not move. With my previous methods, I would probably have slandered at least one pad and would have had to use 30ga wire to fix it.

If you do any surface mount work, get one of these, if you don't already have one. This unit works really well and is a great deal for the money.

 

Interesting. No one has recommended a high dollar station. Two votes for 898D.

Thank you all for your inputs.

I used a Pace PRC-2000 for several years and currently use a Pace MBT-250. I'm looking to get a PRC-2000 in the near future.

I know you've already purchased your station, but I wanted to put this info out there for anyone looking in the future. If you don't mind spending the money these are great stations. I can't speak good enough about the PRC-2000. The MBT-250 station is a subset of exactly the same stuff inside the PRC and is a good substitute if you don't need all the features.

The control of air temp is very precise and doesn't leave you for wanting anything more. It is also 100% constant. The control of the air flow volume doesn't seem to be any better than a $60 station. It's not a crude system, it doesn't offer a lot of precision, but it does have good range. It works great for soldering the 0201 components, soldering a QFN and even works good for smaller heatshrink. Using the thermojet portion of the MBT is good for the 0201 components, but unless you have the solder-paste dispenser to deliver the paste, using the iron is more convenient for those components.

Apart from maintaining a constant temp, which I think most systems would do, the biggest consideration would be how easily you can regulate the air volume. I haven't used an 898D, but I imagine it would be very similar to a Pace system, in regards to how easy it is to control air flow. The crucial factor, at least for me, is on the lower end of the flow: being able to deliver enough heat, but not blow the component away.

In conjunction with what Stuntman said about needing an air station as opposed to just an iron: In my opinion, there have been very few times when I needed an air-rework for soldering, but a lot more when I needed it for desoldering. I can do 98% of my soldering with just an iron. That last two percent is pretty much when it comes to a bga. For that I have a bga rework station and I can order paste stencils for usually less than $20. This is especially helpful when working with temp sensitive parts. Just program the thermal profile, wait for the time and remove the chip.

One of the biggest problems I have had with thermally sensitive parts was trying to heat them up too fast. I usually damaged the components from trying to heat them up too fast, rather than the temperature damaging the component. The different thermal expansion rates of the internals in the component seemed to be the issue. A few times I've never gone above the recommended max, but I heated up the chip too quickly and it destroyed it. My method is applying heat for a few seconds (3 to 5), wait about that long and reapply heat again but slightly longer and continue doing this. Depending on the characteristics of the chip, you can heat it up quickly or slowly. You can look at the datasheet of the component to see what it's recommended thermal profile is. After looking at a few passives, some of your sensitive ADC chips and then testing out some methonds, you'll get a feel for how quickly you can heat up the component.