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Toolcraft desoldering station review: desoldering made easy?

12.5.2021

Soldering is fun. But desoldering? A nightmare. Fortunately, desoldering stations exist for precisely this reason.

Recently, I gave my first DIY keyboard a facelift. In the process, I also replaced the switches. Since the keyboard isn’t hot-swappable, I had to desolder all the switches – using a soldering iron and a manual desoldering pump. Tedious work. And it took me over two and a half hours to get all 168 switches.

Since I want to mod some more keyboards, I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a desoldering station like the one the Youtuber Glarses uses in his videos. So when I came across the Toolcraft desoldering station in the digitec/Galaxus shop, there was no stopping me. Especially given a digitec user had been waiting a long time for an answer to his question:

Anyone that bought this - would you buy again? Looking to desolder mechanical keyboard switches from PCB.

User jonpaulboyd wants to know if the thing is also suitable for desoldering keyboard switches.

Initial operation: easy peasy

The Toolcraft desoldering station is similar to a normal soldering station. It consists of the supply unit and power adapter, temperature control, port for the desoldering gun and the suction pump. But because of the additional components, the supply unit is quite a bit larger than that of a normal soldering station. The desoldering gun comes with a pump and collection container for the (de)soldered solder.

Getting the station up and running is easy peasy: connect the power cable and the suction hose of the gun, then switch on. I can set the temperature on the digital display in increments of one to anything between 160°C and 480°C – in degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. I set it to 360°C, as I always do when soldering PCBs.

The desoldering station works similarly to a manual desoldering pump: I heat the solder joint until it liquefies, then suck it in using the tip of the gun, which has a hole in it. Time to give it a go. I place the gun tip over the solder joint and gently move the pump back and forth. This ensures the solder liquefies evenly. Next, I can suck it in by pulling the trigger. It works – Wild West feeling included, free of charge.

It takes practice

However, I quickly find out that desoldering with the station is not like a revolver duel. It takes patience. If I pull the trigger too early, I lose. The solder is then not liquid enough and the gun’s suction doesn’t get all of it off. When this happens, I have no choice but to re-solder the spot and then desolder it again because the gun can’t reach the small pieces of solder in the holes.

This happens to me a few times. After that, I set the station to 390°C and it works better. I get the impression that the gun doesn’t quite reach the indicated temperature.

Even if I take my time and properly melt the solder before sucking it in, it still doesn’t come off cleanly in some cases. This may also be due to unclean solder joints, since it works the second time around when I redo them.

After about ten solder joints, the station stops sucking the solder in. It’s clogged. So much so that I can't get into the hole at the front of the soldering tip with any of the three cleaning rods supplied. I have to remove the collection container and clean the suction tube from behind. I take this opportunity to also clean the container and put in some brass cleaning wool. This should ensure the filters in the pump don’t clog as quickly. The desoldering station works again. From now on, I decide to clean the suction tube from the front with a cleaning rod every few squeezes.

After just over an hour, I’ve desoldered all 134 solder joints on my keyboard. That means I’m about twice as fast with the desoldering station as I am with the manual desoldering pump. Not too shabby.

The lowdown: useful, but only worth it if you desolder frequently

So far, I’ve always removed solder joints with a manual desoldering pump. It’s worked well for me, but it is tedious when there are a lot of solder joints, like on a keyboard. The desoldering station definitely makes the job easier and faster since both heating and suction are taken care of by the same device. Although I’m faster with the station, tricky solder joints are just as difficult to desolder as with a manual desoldering pump.

So is a desoldering station worth getting? In my case, not really. I mod too few keyboards for it to be justifiable. Generally, I only have to remove a few solder joints every couple of months. In my case, the desoldering station would gather dust in my basement nine months out of twelve. But for people who need to desolder regularly, the station is great. If you clean it regularly during use, it works very well.