Electronics Alternative to solder sucker/wick?

I gooped up too much solder across 3 points. I don't have access to a sucker or a wick (I'm at a remote work location). Does anyone have any neat tricks to remove solder?

 

depends. If it doesn't have to look neat, you could find a thin knife or similar and slide between the solder pas when the solder is still liquid. When you get it seperated, you can resolder the join to get it a bit nice (although you will still have too much solder on the join.)

An alternative is using some fine wire that is stripped the same way you use solder wick. it will be far from as effective as the real thing, as there is no flux in the wire, but it could work good enough for this. (you still need to resolder the point)

 

Melt and a quick blast of compressed air. Messy but effective. But if you're just trying to break a bridge, going over the bridge with a well-wiped iron usually works.

 

to separate I usually add a lot more solder to the bridge, then take a soldering iron thats cleaned off (either wipe it on a sponge, or flick the iron a bit to fling the solder off) and then use teh solder to pick up the excess.

 

I'll try them all till something works and let you know.

 

Another possible option, take a piece of stranded wire, and "pretend" like you are trying to tin the wire with the excess solder. You can strip off quite a bit of the insulation, and it kind of acts like solder wick, just not as well.

 

If you put a bit of flux on the stranded wire it works a lot better too.

 

you can melt the solder with your iron, lift the iron and quickly "wipe" the joint. use something like a thin piece of cardboard to "wipe" the solder off the joint. you probably will need a few passes to get most of it off and cleaning the tip after each melt is good.

this is only an option if there are no other components on one side of the joint. using a clean wire as wick is a good idea if the component on the joint is happy to have high temps for that much time.

best to take wick, solder pump, spare iron, etc when going to remote locations!

 

you can heat the solder up a good deal and while keeping it hot slide a stainless steel knife or some such in there, it will seperate it with some luck. you can do the same with needles to clean out closed holes

 

On an occasion I've used the "inertial" method. Once you heat up the soldered leads, you tap the board against a hard surface. The inertia will cause the molten solder to fly off the connections. This also works when you applied excessive solder to a wire end while tinning it, and want to remove the excess.