On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:01:46 -0500 Rich Webb
wrote in Message id: :

On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:19:33 -0500, JW wrote:

I'm currently looking for an affordable hot air station for the bench. One
that came up often in my searches was this one:
http://www.atomicfireballs.com/stati...oyue/index.php

Can anyone recommend this one, or perhaps have a better alternative?

It's probably worth at least looking over at Howard Electronics for some
baseline pricing http://www.howardelectronics.com/index.html. The hot
air stations are under 'SMD Rework'.

Phew. $350 and up. That's a bit over my budget there.

Several on-line sites have similar items, including MPJA, Web-Tronics,
Sparkfun, and (of course) Amazon.

The surface similarity is suggestive but I don't know of a site that's
published a real tear-down and comparison of one or more name-brand
stations and 'house'-branded models.

FWIW, my home bench sports a Xytronic 850D that I've been pretty happy
with.

Thanks.