Question for Hakko 808 owners

dahnz

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Finally got my Hakko 808 and am very happy with it - great build quality and I was able to desolder a bunch of chips easily and quickly. I would happily recommend it to anyone wanting a desolderer. But I wanted to ask what temperature setting people use it at. You can set it between 380 and 480C (715-895F) but the dial uses the numbers 1 to 5, not the actual temperature.

I'm going to be doing a couple of power supply rebuilds on Williams boards and I tested it on a junk Williams board at the 2 setting (probably around 400C). The solder started to liquify in about a second, so would that be about right? I didn't have any problems with pads lifting up, but I note that at this setting it's higher than the maximum temperature of the Aoyue desoldering station which I was looking at. It's also higher than the 350C temperature that a lot of people recommended for soldering.

Is it soldering practice to make one of the joints on a chip more solid than the rest? There always seems to be one at the end of a chip that is much harder to clear than the rest. Or is that just some variant of Murphy's law, that the last joint will always be a bugger?

Thanks, Dominic
 
I left mine at the factory setting. I have never burnt a pad yet. I take care to focus the heat on the leg of the part, and not directly on the pad if at all possible.

Pulled all the components for an LV board install last night in about 3 minutes :)
 
I left mine at the factory setting as well.


As for the harder joint... If you look at the joint it will likely have a very large pad of copper it is connected to. This additional metal is wicking away the heat which is why it takes longer to desolder. I have seen the larger pads on both the ground circuits and the power supply circuits.
 
Thanks, guys.

Yeah, I'm loving mine too. (Got it from DLP Lamps if anyone cares - they matched the RadioShack price and gave me a good deal on shipping to NZ.) I actually couldn't tell what setting mine was set at - there's just that Phillips-type screw and until I had turned it all the way clockwise, I didn't know which part of the X pointed to the setting. I'd read somewhere, though, that they often come set to about 3, which I thought was too high, but then as soon as the solder melts you just hit that button and the temperature drops anyway, so I guess it's all good.

Thanks for the note on the harder joints, Oryk. That makes sense because they do always seem to be at the end of the chips where the power or ground is. Any handy tricks to help or do I just wait it out or turn up the heat?
 
Ahhh, the hako 808... It was my first desolder gun it's what I started on... :)
Long gone... it's a great starter... you'll learn to master it I wouldn't worry about the temp setting.

Be prepared for tip degradation though and clogs. . :)

I think mine lasted about 2 years maybe a little more and I used the piss out of it. lots of tips had to be replaced.
 
Thanks for the note on the harder joints, Oryk. That makes sense because they do always seem to be at the end of the chips where the power or ground is. Any handy tricks to help or do I just wait it out or turn up the heat?


Just wait it out, it only takes a few seconds longer.
 
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