Does anybody here have any experience with hot air rework station soldering? Anything to look for or avoid? And, how does this compare to flood and suck or toaster oven soldering? I was looking at this one as being in my price range and having generally good Amazon reviews.

Looks decent. I don't have any experience with them, but Ayoue seems to be well thought of. Price looks good as well. I would think this would be much easier than the flood and suck method, particularly in clean up Another plus for being able to localize the heat rather than having to heat the whole board up (toaster oven).

I use a few different ones at the office. I prefer the Pace machines, but they might be a bit expensive. If you design a board with top side components only, the DIY methods using stencils work fine. I honestly only use the hot air station for messing with the secure packages and BGAs and maybe the odd SRAM module.

Oh and assuming this is to streamline small production runs, what about looking into an assembly service?

Edited February 18, 201115 yr by luvdunhill

Also, ever wonder why they call them "rework" stations?

Can't say I've seen that one before, I've only used Pace machines when I worked in the industry, mostly the PRC2000 and you don't want to know what that one costs. And they're called rework stations since they're used to rework and fix the dickups from the wavesolder and reflow oven machines. Which is the one I really don't get, why is it called a reflow oven?

I always assumed they were called reflow because of this:

I do wonder what a ST300 would go for used though.... here's one for example:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Pace-ST-300-Rework-Station-/330482865166?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4cf250540e#ht_1747wt_907

Edited February 19, 201115 yr by luvdunhill

Oh and assuming this is to streamline small production runs, what about looking into an assembly service?

Too many hand matched parts/different configurations to make that work. Also, I am concerned that stencils and/or ovens will leave filled through holes. So, the directional hot air seems like a decent solution. Pace is definitely too expensive, but I think I'll give one of the less expensive ones a try and see what happens.

I took rework to suggest that nobody would solder a whole PCB full of SMD parts with one, but that it was the best way to do a few. I guess I'll find out.