Well, one guy reviewed it on the site and said it sucked the air out of a 2 liter soda bottle and flattened it. It wouldn't need to flow continuously, but you are right. I don't exactly need one so I figured for $3.50 it would be worth it. But they don't even have them stocked anymore.
New version. I made a 100w version but it was too much, this uses about 60w which is *more* than enough for most things. I wound the wire round a 2mm drill bit, inserted a 1.5mm length of brass down the middle and though the clay pipe triangle thing - so I had something to build the clay around. covered it in fireclay, including the wires they are nicely insulated by clay. I then heated the clay slowley with a blowtorch to dry it out - it is probably not cured but it works. I also wrapped a length of 0.2mm copper wire round it so if it should break it will still hold together. This is more of a safety thing but im more than happy to use it. So far it has ran for 30mins each a few times. Handle doesnt get hot but I could make it easyer to hold. The first chip resting on top couldnt be desoldered with the other versions. worked very well and was quick, 2 or 3 seconds of heating and I could push it away. The chip below has 44 pins. It took about 15 seconds of heating (first try!). This has a lot of pins and was very easy to remove, took about 10 seconds but is probably still dead. The pins are bent from me holding it, not from desoldering. This and the other chip with pins on 4 sides would be quite difficult to solder, mostly because of alignment and checking for defects. Couldnt desolder this either with the other versions. Took a lot of heating due to small surface area. If I remembered to use my solder sucker it could have been a lot easyer. There was also a 40 pin smd chip, pins on 2 sides, this was very easy to desolder and possibly very easy to solder with some practice. I am going to make some solder paste then see how well it works on breadboard with normal through-hole components. I think it will be a *lot* quicker than with an iron. I would position everything, flux it and add paste, then heat up each compenent. Now to think about making pcb's by printing a stencil on paper and hand cutting with a mini dremel or knife (dont have laser printer/photo resist and dont really like the idea of etching either)
I find it extremely funny that you are willing to play with high voltages and currents and temps to build a hot air rework station, but not a few chemicals for etching.. It takes all kinds, I suppose. if you've got a local print shop or library, you can usually find a usuable laser printer there.
High voltages? no. High currents? nope. 8A is not high current. 600KA is high current. Im not scared of most chemicals, one of my previous jobs involved disolving large quantitys of metal with reagent grade hydrochloric/nitric acid/ammonia. I know how to use them safely but that doesnt mean I want to. I hate the fumes, I could do it outside, but it is messy, expensive and not particually great for the environment (acid down drains is illegail. Lots of people do it, but even if you diloute it 100x times it is still nasty.
Ferric chloride has essentially no odor, and can be neutralized with Sodium Bicarbonate (Baking Soda). It does stain skin and clothes, though.
8A at what voltage and what frequency? 1A from a mains line is more than enough to kill you if it lands across your heart. In any case, nice work! Too bad it looks kind of...phallic right now.
I was trying not to comment... Considering the stated 8A at 60w, the voltage should be 7-8 v. Does anyone know what temperature celluloid acetate transparencies are safe up to? If they're resistant to ~800 deg f, they'd make excellent high temperature electrical insulation.
by celluloid acetate transparencies I assume you mean the things used on OHP and laser printing for pcb etching. I would be *very* suprised if it was more than 100-150c. Just a bad picture, was trying to show everything is moulded inside the ceramic and so makes it much easyer to use (and a lot safer). The whole thing is about the width and length of 3 AAA batterys.
Yes, I was. However, they do have to withstand the toner fusing process, which I believe is well over 100c.
According to this website, it's 232 C or 449.6 F. Why am I under the impression that there are high temperature silicones that go up to 1200 F? I thought they had something like that but never found anything over 500 when looking for silicone tubing.
