Yup, the FX-888D is a wonderful station, but the Metcal was better. 😁

I think I'll go with the manual pump + wick for starters, and get a vacuum gun later down the road. I'm only gonna remove a few caps for now, and I'll do it when I have plenty of spare time, so I think that's alright. I'll be more through reading this topic tomorrow, when I"ll start looking for these solder stations nationally (things from China can take well over two months to arrive here). My funds are somewhat limited so I'll try to acquire the absolute necessary gear in the course of two or three monts then the rest through the year.
As far as I understood, what I should get ASAP is:

• A good solder station (like the Hakko models mentioned above)
• TIPS! Varying sizes and spares!
• Solder wick (multiple sizes)
• Good solder and solder flux

Good to have ASAP, but won't kill me to wait a little:

• ESR meter
• Capacitance meter

Things that can wait:

• A GOOD DMM (I already have a cheap basic multimeter)
• Vacuum desoldering iron

Thanks for the opinios so far guys. It will be good to have proper tools =)

alexanrs wrote:

I'll be more through reading this topic tomorrow, when I"ll start looking for these solder stations nationally (things from China can take well over two months to arrive here).

This is true.

I was lucky enough to be in Hong Kong on holiday, and I picked up one of the desoldering guns on a day-trip to Shenzhen. That was one crazy day.

alexanrs wrote:

[*]A GOOD DMM (I already have a cheap basic multimeter)

A cheap basic one is good enough for this.
You use it mostly to check caps for dead short and for circuit tracing.
If you check a shorted cap for ESR it might appear it just has a really low ESR.
This is because an affordable ESR meter is only good to +/- 0.01 ohms and some caps are less than that so their ESR may show 0.00 ohms on the meter.
Need to double check those with the DMM to make sure they are not shorted.
.

alexanrs wrote:

[…]
Show full quote

• A good solder station (like the Hakko models mentioned above)
• TIPS! Varying sizes and spares!
• Solder wick (multiple sizes)
• Good solder and solder flux

The most important thing along with purchasing a temperature controlled station is to replace the useless needle tip with a quality 3mm (or so) wide spade tip. Needle tips are inefficient at delivering heat to your components. Except for really exotic applications, the spade is what you will generally use. Certainly keep a spare, but if are diligent about clearing off flux after each session, it should last a long time.

gdjacobs wrote:

The most important thing along with purchasing a temperature controlled station is to replace the useless needle tip with a quality 3mm (or so) wide spade tip. Needle tips are inefficient at delivering heat to your components. Except for really exotic applications, the spade is what you will generally use. Certainly keep a spare, but if are diligent about clearing off flux after each session, it should last a long time.

Yes.
When the tip first touches the work the heat is sucked right out of the tip. The heater then has to replace that heat. (Recover)
Motherboards are very thick compared to most other boards so they suck away more heat than most other boards.
If the tip does not have enough mass (to store heat) the tip-temp will drop below where you need it before the heater can catch up.
Long thin needle tips are horrible about storing enough heat for motherboard work. They just can't do it.
.

I also like to use wick on stuff like ram slots or ISA slots, even soldered CPUs. Like PCBONEZ said it's much faster then a vacuum pump and after some practice gets easy to use. Using a manual solder sucker or vacuum pump is fine for beginners, but It's very time consuming and some tools are a bitch to clean up. For capacitor replacement a regular heated solder sucker will do just fine.

I also use two irons at the same time - saves a lot of time and hassle - also usefull for removing the odd SMD component (like a ceramic smd capacitor or mosfet) off a board w/o heat warping it like it would with thin PCBs and hot air.

Like PCBONEZ said get a capacimeter. It's vital for old hardware like this. Lots of times a capacitor looks fine when in fact it is way off-spec. Make sure to get a wide range capacitance meter so you can measure anything from 10uf caps on sound cards to 4700uf and higher found on some motherboards and power supplies. Some more expensive capacitance meters can also measure ESR.

I'm old school, I use a butane soldering iron and a pick.
But no, you should get a butane soldering iron; they can get as hot as hell and fast too. They're cheep, you can adjust how hot they are and change the tips.
For super small stuff I heat an micro screwdriver with butane soldering iron's end removed. With the end removed it's a trouch/heat gun.

I don't like solder irons with flames for repair work. There is always something plastic close by that makes it too much of a pain.
They can be handy if you are just stripping a junk board for parts though.

One big deal thing to check on ESR meters is that they use a 100kHz test signal.
Might be square wave, saw tooth, sine wave - that doesn't matter too much but the frequency does.
.
The datasheets for low ESR caps give the ESR at 100kHz.
If the test signal is not 100kHz you have to do math for each cap to know what it is at 100kHz before you know if it's in spec.
(There is a conversion chart in most datasheets for this purpose.)
Huge PITA.

Most combined LCR-ESR meters don't have a 100kHz test signal.
Many cheap ESR (only) meters don't either.
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

One big deal thing to check on ESR meters is that they use a 100kHz test signal. Might be square wave, saw tooth, sine wave - th […]
Show full quote

One big deal thing to check on ESR meters is that they use a 100kHz test signal.
Might be square wave, saw tooth, sine wave - that doesn't matter too much but the frequency does.
.
The datasheets for low ESR caps give the ESR at 100kHz.
If the test signal is not 100kHz you have to do math for each cap to know what it is at 100kHz before you know if it's in spec.
(There is a conversion chart in most datasheets for this purpose.)
Huge PITA.

Most combined LCR-ESR meters don't have a 100kHz test signal.
Many cheap ESR (only) meters don't either.
.

I think I'm going to program a micro to perform sweep tests on caps and chokes.

PCBONEZ wrote:

I don't like solder irons with flames for repair work. There is always something plastic close by that makes it too much of a pain.
They can be handy if you are just stripping a junk board for parts though.

They don't all have an open flame.

saturn wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

I don't like solder irons with flames for repair work. There is always something plastic close by that makes it too much of a pain.
They can be handy if you are just stripping a junk board for parts though.

They don't have a open flame.

Show me that one.

PCBONEZ wrote:

saturn wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

I don't like solder irons with flames for repair work. There is always something plastic close by that makes it too much of a pain.
They can be handy if you are just stripping a junk board for parts though.

They don't have a open flame.

Show me that one.

Most of the butane irons I used don't have a open flame, the flame is contained inside the irons tips.
In fact I never seen one that had a open flame.

I use a direct butane torch for crude field work if I have to do automotive repairs. For electronics? Never!

saturn wrote:

Most of the butane irons I used don't have a open flame, the flame is contained inside the irons tips.
In fact I never seen one that had a open flame.

The ones I have seen shoot flames sideways through a hole.
When I was talking about stripping boards I was meaning with a butane torch.

Hey guys... I've been browsing my national "eBay" as I like to use it to assess prices (as you can find almost anything there). I'll search on other stores once too, though I just learned that Farnell closed on Brazil 😢
Anyway, here goes a list of stuff I found. What do you guys think?

Solder station

• 60W HK-936B Hikari analog station - Is Hikari a decent brand? At least a few ads for el-cheapo soldering irons and stations claim to be "simillar to Hikari", just as some claim to be "simillar to Hakko", so its at least not bottom of the barrel. The price is also good (a bit over US$50), but not as cheap as some chinese stations that look like crap to a criminal degree. "Hikari" is also a japanese name, not a chinese one, so there is hope 🤣
• 70W FX-888D Hakko digital station - one brand that has been recommended more than once in this thread, but I could not find an analog one for the life of me (as it would probably be cheaper), and this costs 3x what the Hikari does. If the Hikari one is good I'd rather buy that, but if its crap I'll byte the bullet and get this one instead.
• 60W 936 Ya Xun station - Call me prejudiced, but this sounds too chinese. Also the color scheme is too "Hakko-esque". Still, I included it because it is the cheapest station I'd have the courage to buy.

Capacimeter

• Hikari capacimeter - Seems to have a wide range... I also found something "miniPa" for US$10-15 more, but looks like it's got the same range.

ESR Meter

• MESR-100 - some googling revealed to me that this should be decent, though far more expensive here (almost US$90,00) than its price internationally. Still, it is the nicest thing I could find here besides really expensive lab stuff.
• Analog ESR meter - Looks weird, don't really like it. But besides the MESR-100 this is all I can find (other than those chinese ESR meters with a bare PCB and an LCD hanging by its flat cable). Unless you guys say this is sufficient, I'm not even gonna consider it

Solder tip

• 3mm flat screwdriver-esque tip - Is this one of the "spade"-like tips mentioned before? Also, I assume this is compatible with all the stations I mentioned above.

Thumbs up on the Hakko FX-888D. That's the modern version of what I use. (I'm too cheap to buy that sort of thing new very often.)
I don't know anything about the other two.

Cap meter looks okay. Goes from 200 pF to 20,000 uF. (Some don't go high enough.)

The Analog ESR meter is not suitable for this.
They are useful for things that use GP caps (CRT TVs, old radios) but for low ESR caps where you need to see +/- 0.01 ohms they aren't so useful.

I need to go find some tech details on the MESR-100 before I say anything on that.
They are kind of fibbing on their range. You need a 4-wire Kelvin setup to read ohms accurately below 0.01 ohms.

You need to decide on the iron before you invest in tips. They aren't universal fit.
But yes - that's one of the 'styles' that works well and is popular.
Might also want to get a 2mm-ish (same type) for some situations.
.

I'd say go for the genuine Hakko as long as it's not a ridiculous in price. Also a used genuine Hakko should be fine. As we mentioned, they tend to last forever.

MESR-100 looks great for loose caps. Not so good for in-circuit.
Test signal frequency is 100kHz which is good. (Makes life easier.)
Test signal voltage in some ranges is too high for in-circuit because it may turn on nearby ICs and/or diodes. (Creating parallel paths.)
See video at time 12:25 through 15:25 or so to see what I mean about the test voltage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnMv7i_G2Os

150 millivolts is a good target for a max test voltage.
200 millivolts might be okay but I like more room for error.