YIHUA 948 Standard Desoldering Station, 80W, with Auto Shutoff, Variable Precise Temperature (716°F ~ 896°F), ºC/°F display, Sleep Function and More.

TLDR up front… Buy it. Well worth the money.Alright, for everyone else that wants details…I have been wanting one of these for a while now, but couldn’t part with $250-$400 for the ones I saw everyone else buying. I found this one while watching a random YouTube video. Looked ok and figured for the price, I would give it a shot. Let’s just say, I have NOT been disappointed. This desoldering vacuum has done everything I have asked of it. I usually use the plunger desoldering pump and desoldering braid. This unit makes short work of desoldering components. The basics operation is as follows:1. Let it warm up (it won’t vacuum until it’s heated to your preset temperature).2. Place the tip onto the solder side of the PCB of the component you want to remove.3. Hold until the solder melts.4. Pull the trigger and let the vacuum do its thing.That’s it in a nutshell. The vacuum isn’t timed, so it will vacuum as long as you keep the trigger pulled. It will remove a good deal of solder before the tip cools enough that the solder stops flowing, at which point, you simply remove the tip and let it reheat a bit. I have removed copious amounts of solder in one pull.The unit was packaged well. Included in the box was cleaning tools and some spare tips, filters, and misc. items.Tip cleaning:You will have to occasionally clean the tip to remove any buildup. You will know cleaning is necessary when it no longer sucks up solder. There are 2 different size tip cleaners, one small and one large. Make sure the unit is preheated and then insert the small one into the tip. Push slowly to remove any clogging, then finish with the large.Vacuum gun cleaning:The vacuum gun has a spring inside to catch the removed solder. Over time, this spring will accumulate solder and require cleaning. To clean, press the tab at the back of the gun. This allows the glass tube to be removed. Inside the tube is a rubber plug, gauze type fine filter, thin black coarse filter, solder capture spring, and a front rubber plug with a small tube. To remove the internal components, simply remove the rubber plugs. The instruction manual has a breakdown of the assembly if you forget how it goes together. I am only going to concentrate on spring cleaning here, because the other parts aren’t serviceable, only replaceable when past their service life. To clean the spring, grasp and hold one end. With your other hand, pull the spring and release, letting it snap back into place. The spring is stainless steel and while some solder may stick to it, the majority will flake off. If you clean it between uses or (depending on how many removals you make each time), you shouldn’t have any issues. I have had massive globs and most would come out. To remove stubborn stuck on solder, I used my soldering iron to heat up the spring and snap it as above. This WILL shoot hot solder, so be prepared with the proper safety equipment and watch the direction in which you aim. I did ruin a spring by trying to over-stretch it and by trying to “unwind” it from the blob… neither of which worked.All in all, after a slight learning curve, I absolutely love this machine. Replacement expendables are available, as well as the complete gun (which I did have to replace because I did something stupid). If you remove components frequently or do kind of electronics repairs, then you need this tool. It is a major step up from plunger type solder suckers, desoldering bulbs, and desoldering bulb type desoldering irons. Through-hole insert desoldering is where this machine shines. The plunger type has a finite amount of suction and I often needed to do the process 2, 3, 4 times before I could remove enough solder to remove the component. With this unit, the vacuum pulls as long as you keep the trigger pulled. Very rarely have I not been able to remove all of the solder in one pull. I am very happy with my purchase and would buy another in a minute if needed. I do a fair amount of desoldering and the time and aggravation it has saved me is well worth the cost. Hope this helps!! Thank you for reading if you got this far.😊

I wish i would have bought this years ago. I started out trying just a plunger deal and my soldering iron, then bought an electric with the plunger built in, that one was 30 watt and it really didn't get hot enough, so I got a 40 watt with a plunger and that really didn't get hot enough and I've used copper braid and that always seemed like a pain in the you know where so i broke down and bought this. As an example I just desoldered 6 caps i marked them and within 10 seconds they were desoldered. I'm pretty shaky but if I had a steady hand I bet I could have got them done in 6 seconds. Just so much easier. Has a mess of extra tips and the filter things inside the tube that collects the solder. I think the tips have .8mm and 1.2 mm but I had a couple bigger caps with thicker leads and I could barely get the largest tip down onto the leads. If that should happen again I'll just enlarge the hole in the tip slightly. Usually I don't think that will happen. I think it heats up pretty quick. I usually turn it on, mark the solder pads I need to desolder, double check and triple check (mistakes are easier to avoid than to correct) and by then it beeps telling me it's up to temp. Put it on the spot and pull the trigger for vacuum and it's desoldered. Literally one second, may even be quicker if you have a steady hand. For soldering I even built a fixture to hold my iron steady. Mine I guess is the older model? It's only desoldering, i thought there is a newer one with a soldering gun also but mines only the desoldering. I've probably used it 10 times or so so hopefully it will hold up. It's a fairly heavy unit, i was expecting some sort of lightweight cheap thing but this is pretty heavy and looks to be built extremely well. If you do any desoldering more than just a few spots this thing is really what you need. Just saves so much time but for me it's more about avoiding frustration.