[MoonDragn]

Hi all, I just read through some of the comments in here and there are a lot of good tips etc. I was a sears electronics repair technician for a number of years when I was in college and done a fair bit of soldering myself. At the time, it was mostly through hole components and we almost never worked on surface mounted ones. The reason being the irons used were way too hot for them.

That said, let's talk about what I know, desoldering through hole components. As someone mentioned, the soldering pump can damage the circuit board, but only if the traces are old and the iron is too hot. The pump is usually used to remove large amount of solder or to get the stuff in the hole.

For starters, make sure you clean the surface first with a damp paper towel to remove surface dirt and grime. That stuff acts like an insulator making it that much harder to heat up. This next step is a trick I always use... Heat up the soldering iron first with a bit of solder, then contact that solder on the iron with the largest soldered area and ADD more solder. The reason for this is it allows the old solder to mix with the new solder making it melt easier and burn away some of the residual oxides that are left behind. Solder also has flux in it so it helps the overall spread of heat.

Once that stuff is liquid, use the solder pump to suck directly on top of the lead of the component, directly over the hole. That is the only reason you use the pump, to suck away all that excess solder through the hole. Once the excess solder is out of the way, then you use the wick to absorb the rest. You will find this method makes it very easy to remove components from the board, usually takes less than 60 secs.

Try not to make contact with the traces directly with your iron, that usually risks damaging them. Your heat spreader is your solder, and if you must remove the rest of the solder off the contacts, use a solder wick and contact the solder wick with the iron instead. Keep in mind you don't have to remove every bit of solder, after all you are probably soldering new components after you removed the old ones. So just as long as you can pull the component out, your job is done. If you still see solder on the other side of the board, heat up the lead on the component, not the traces/pads on the board before you pull. It is often not necessary to remove solder on both sides, just the underside. Then you can just pull the component out by the above method of heating the leads.