Best soldering iron?

[EphraimK]

I am going to attempt to re-solder my broken Nintendo Switch Lite's CPU, what would the best soldering kit be? I would like to get the best thing I can.

[ZetZet]

You mean hot air station? I don't think resoldering a BGA CPU is something you can even attempt if you don't know what to buy to be honest with you. 

[AndreiArgeanu]

If you want to reflow all you need is a hot air station. Hakko makes some pretty good stuff. If you want to remove the CPU from the board then you need a BGA rework like the one below, alongside a stencil for the CPU and solder balls/paste, plus some practice. You're probably best off just buying a new switch.

[thekingofmonks]

Best I could do with just a hot air gun and some flux is desolder or reflow a chip. Not trying to offend you, but if a soldering iron is what you think will help solder a BGA chip, you're better off buying a new device or at least getting yours repaired by a professional.

[EphraimK]

15 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

Best I could do with just a hot air gun and some flux is desolder or reflow a chip. Not trying to offend you, but if a soldering iron is what you think will help solder a BGA chip, you're better off buying a new device or at least getting yours repaired by a professional.

well, i'm just trying to teach myself, and this is a practice project

[Takumidesh]

I agree with everyone here.

 

I still want to take the opportunity to plug (no pun intended) a weller. You are going to pay for it, but it will be the last iron you ever buy.

[thekingofmonks]

2 minutes ago, EDKTech said:

well, i'm just trying to teach myself, and this is a practice project

Well then I suppose you can follow Andrei's suggestion; buy a soldering station.

 

Also, you might learn soldering techniques and PCB analysis from Youtubers such as Northridgefix or "Actually Hardcore Overclocking". They have quite some useful in-depth videos.

[EphraimK]

6 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

Well then I suppose you can follow Andrei's suggestion; buy a soldering station.

 

Also, you might learn soldering techniques and PCB analysis from Youtubers such as Northridgefix or "Actually Hardcore Overclocking". They have quite some useful in-depth videos.

yes, i watch them. Thank you all!

 

34 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

If you want to reflow all you need is a hot air station. Hakko makes some pretty good stuff. If you want to remove the CPU from the board then you need a BGA rework like the one below, alongside a stencil for the CPU and solder balls/paste, plus some practice. You're probably best off just buying a new switch.

um that thing is $20,000 USD

[EphraimK]

is this a good choice?

[AndreiArgeanu]

15 minutes ago, EDKTech said:

um that thing is $20,000 USD

There's cheaper models. But that's what you need if you want to remove the CPU from the board and install it back on again properly. If you just want to reflow then a hot air stations is all you need. Edit: besides the BGA rework machine you'd also need a soldering iron and some solder wick to clean the pads on the board.

[EphraimK]

8 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

There's cheaper models. But that's what you need if you want to remove the CPU from the board and install it back on again properly. If you just want to reflow then a hot air stations is all you need. Edit: besides the BGA rework machine you'd also need a soldering iron and some solder wick to clean the pads on the board.

Is the one i posted above sufficient?

 

https://www.amazon.com/TOAUTO-Soldering-Conversion-Temperature-Correction/dp/B08L8YGYQZ/ref=sr_1_25?crid=270TH35811HGN&keywords=hot+air+and+soldering+station&qid=1666023166&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI0LjI4IiwicXNhIjoiMy40MSIsInFzcCI6IjIuNjQifQ%3D%3D&s=hi&sprefix=hot+air+and+solder%2Ctools%2C127&sr=1-25

[Heats with Nvidia]

If you want to try soldering i suggest you get a Pinecil, TS100 or one of the Chinese stations with a JBC iron. If you want to invest more money, a real JBC station is a good choice. Other manufacturers also have some good stations, but you should always choose one with a directly heated tip. This means, the heater is part of the tip. Almost every station that has tips without the heater inside is worse than a TS100 or pinecil. Even Weller, Ersa etc... I worked with all of them and even my old Ersa I-Con, which is top of the line, is barely better than a TS100. But all of them won`t really help you with your Project.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

On 10/18/2022 at 2:47 PM, Heats with Nvidia said:

If you want to try soldering i suggest you get a Pinecil, TS100 or one of the Chinese stations with a JBC iron. If you want to invest more money, a real JBC station is a good choice. Other manufacturers also have some good stations, but you should always choose one with a directly heated tip. This means, the heater is part of the tip. Almost every station that has tips without the heater inside is worse than a TS100 or pinecil. Even Weller, Ersa etc... I worked with all of them and even my old Ersa I-Con, which is top of the line, is barely better than a TS100. But all of them won`t really help you with your Project.

It really depends on the type of board you're soldering on, for small PCBs you won't notice much of a difference. You also want to be in and out as quickly as possible to avoid thermal damage to the PCB (copper delamination, etc.). So you only want to heat the area locally, so the trick is to pump a lot of energy into the area you're soldering very quickly before it has a chance to conduct away. That's where something like an Ersa iron will shine compared to a TS100. When soldering a component to an 8 mil copper ground plane the TS100 will struggle and might need tens of seconds to get hot enough for a proper solder joint, an Ersa iron will do it in less than two seconds. It ain't usually clear from their datasheets, since they list "nominal" power and casually forget to mention maximum power. We clocked some of the soldering stations (can't remember if it was Ersa or Pace) in our lab doing well in excess of two times their rated nominal power if you just stick them against a large block of metal. But I don't disagree that it ain't worth getting a latest generation Ersa, JBC or Pace station, those things are meant for professional use. Also, the nice thing about Ersa, and why their stations were so popular in our lab, was that the distance between where you hold the iron and the tip is miniscule compared to their competitors. It makes a huge difference when hand soldering something like a 0201 resistor between two IC pins.

[Heats with Nvidia]

1 hour ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

It really depends on the type of board you're soldering on...

You are right, the tip selection also is a real plus and important. If you use a big tip, even the TS100 works really well when soldering on a big ground plane, but it has its limitations.  Also the distance to the tip etc... are factors, but basically it is so cheap and you come so close to the performance of the professional irons, that its really bad for the older style irons, even the professional ones.

 

If you do soldering professionally, of course, a good station makes sense.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

1 hour ago, Heats with Nvidia said:

You are right, the tip selection also is a real plus and important. If you use a big tip, even the TS100 works really well when soldering on a big ground plane, but it has its limitations.  Also the distance to the tip etc... are factors, but basically it is so cheap and you come so close to the performance of the professional irons, that its really bad for the older style irons, even the professional ones.

 

If you do soldering professionally, of course, a good station makes sense.

Yeah, definitely. The stations usually also support running temperature control for dual-tip prong-style desoldering tools, vacuum desoldering tools, etc. and then we haven't even gotten into software features like temperature logging, controller parameter adjustment, quick temperature calibration, etc. which are super useful for professional use. But you definitely don't need that for hobby use. But this is also why I'm not a big fan of Weller, they charge a premium price for something that tends to have the feature set of a knock-off Hakko from Aliexpress, and the performance tends to be rather similar as well. They've been living off their former reputation ever since they got bought out by/merged into Danaher/Fortive/Apex/whatever the beast calls itself these days.

 

But in terms of soldering training, it's not a bad idea to watch Pace's old training materials: https://www.youtube.com/c/paceworldwide/playlists 

While it doesn't really get into the considerations for lead-free soldering, applying Rossman levels of flux tends to eliminate most of those that'd be applicable for hobbyists anyway. But they also take a deep dive into board level repair that you only see on 100k+ EUR industrial, aerospace and military circuitboards. They also tend to go more towards the high-reliability aerospace soldering courses from the likes of ESA/NASA. The latter is also worth checking out, they have really cool instructions on how to properly terminate a wire with strain-relief, etc. While you don't want to do all of that, it sometimes can give you pretty nice ideas on how you can mount or fix something in a tight enclosure without it breaking instantly.

[zachsa999]

I'm living my Weller we1010. I'ts got some basic needed features like auto shut off, and seems really high quality.

 

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

3 hours ago, zachsa999 said:

I'm living my Weller we1010. I'ts got some basic needed features like auto shut off, and seems really high quality.

 

They're not bad! They're simply not very competitive from a price-quality point of view. For example, you can get a legit Hakko with a similar feature set for about €40 to €50 less than the WE1010.

[zachsa999]

6 hours ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

They're not bad! They're simply not very competitive from a price-quality point of view. For example, you can get a legit Hakko with a similar feature set for about €40 to €50 less than the WE1010.

I'll have to give the a gander next time I need a soldering station, which hopefully will be a while