don't try this at home folks

When I was studying electrical engineering (dropped out), my favorite activity was developing my soldering skills on pc boards. Favorite tool: solder sucker.
 
I think my only solder sucker was a red Radio Shack rubber bulb with the teflon tip. Probably cost me about 2 bucks about 40 years ago. I used to build slot car chassis from brass and piano wire, so it got used a lot to clean up things. Last time I tried to use it, it was dry rotted and cracked... went into the trash.
 
Solder wick works pretty good too.
Indeed it does but you need to be generous with it. For PCBs you can handle, pedal circuits e.g. the 'flood it and bang it on the bench edge works well but mind yer socks!

Suckers are fine but if you work on legacy gear with single sided print they can cause it to lift. Audio gear is probably better but the print in early GEC CTVs was reet fragile ***t!

Dave.
 
A real rework station with heater, vacuum and iron with temp controls is the kit. My little brother has several of them but he does industrial electronics repairs. I have a modest rework station that I bought last year and just got out of the box as I just finished a work area upstairs for doing instrument and electronics repairs and setups.
 
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