On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:13:38 GMT, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:


Second, there is a wad of felt in the glass tube inside the
handpiece that also becomes saturated with fine solder dust and flux. I
have not found those to be recoverable due to the non-soluble dust. I got
a bag of them with the machine, so I'm
probably set for life.

If they are anything like the felt wads fitted in the same place in my
Weller vacuum desoldering station, you can recover them once, sometimes
twice, by just running a curved, blunt scalpel blade over the surface as a
scraper. The surface layer thats stuffed with solder dust, just falls away
re-exposing clean, uncontaminated felt. I would guess that you perhaps lose
a half a mm from the pad's thickness.


Just trim a bit off the end pointed towards the solder side.
I liked to use a sharp pair of dikes (take several nibbles)
or a good utility shear. You only need to take off a 1/32 or
so. You can do that trick several times before you have to
replace the wad/filter.

A piece of stainless steel antenna rod works good for poking
out the hollow tip. Put a little wiggle in it so it looks
like this:

-------------^----------
| |
---

The little wiggle/bump will help burnish down the burr that
builds up inside after use (and filing). You can also use a
flat-file to straighten the end after it wears a bit. I use
to give up on a desolder tip when if developed a hole
farther upstream inside the heater area

A small straight screw driver with about a 1/16 inch
diameter shank and 6 inches long works really good to take
nasties out of the heater area. Run it in with the tip out
and the heater on/hot. Be quick about it so you don't melt
the handle down on the driver.

I had all the proper tools/brushes available for cleaning,
but these little guys did a better job in my opinion.

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
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