How-To: Make a surface mount soldering iron -- Engadget

How-To: Make a surface mount soldering iron

By Will O'Brien posted Mar 7th 2006 7:37PM

Modding today's hardware often means moving or removing tiny surface mount components, and using a standard soldering iron feels about as effective as using a hammer to kill a fly. If buying an expensive reflow workstations seems like overkill to overclock your laptop, check out today's How-To where we'll build a simple reflow tool for under $20. Don't know what we're talking about? Well, you might want to click on anyway, it's an impressive feat nonetheless that might want to get you installing particular chips on particular game consoles (or not).

For today's How-To:

You'll need:

• Radio-Shack de-soldering Iron ($10)
• Small fish tank air pump ($7)
• Six to eight feet of vinyl fish tank air hose ($1)
• De-soldering braid or steel wool 
• Zip ties
  

Modify the de-soldering iron

Read more...
http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/07/how-to-make-a-surface-mount-soldering-iron/

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