John Robertson wrote:


When you are 'orbiting' I take that to mean that you are applying side
pressure to the leg of the device to move it far enough away from the
walls of the tube that the solder is removed completely and the leg has
no sticking point to the tube. That is the same process I use.

Right, you make the desoldering iron tip push the pin in a circular movement
while the suction is operating. This is the technique described in the Pace
manual, and it REALLY works!
I just like using the Soldapullt, it is faster and when done with a bit
of experience (35 years in my case) gives very good consistent results
when extracting one or two ICs at a time.
Well, I rework some prety expensive boards for physics research gear. One
thing I've done a lot of is recovering $10 connectors with 68 pins. The
problem is not the cost of ONE connector, but the distributors make you buy
160 pieces minimum order! That does get expensive. We have piles of old
boards that have been superseded with newer designs. I can desolder the
connectors in about 10 minutes with the Pace. The boards would be usable if
we wanted to do that, but the evidence of the desoldering would be visible.
I'd hate to try doing a 68-pin connector with a spring-piston solder puller.

Jon