Why I stopped using a hot air rework station on camera flex cables

Everyone in the shop keeps telling new guys to grab the hot air station first when a ribbon cable needs reflowing, but I think that advice is backwards for anything smaller than a quarter inch. I finally switched to a plain old soldering iron with a fine tip about 8 months ago after frying my third flex cable in a row on a customer's Canon, and I have not cooked a single one since. With hot air you are heating the whole area, so the plastic connector housing starts to soften before your solder even flows. My iron sits at 650 degrees and I can touch just the two pads I need for maybe 2 seconds each. The hot air guys say it is faster, and sure it is, right up until you melt a connector and eat a $140 part. Has anyone else made this switch, or am I just bad with the air wand?

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green.hannah5d ago

But the thing that gets missed here is preheating. If you warm the whole board from underneath at like 150 degrees before you hit it with air, the connector never sees enough heat to soften because the air only needs a quick pass to flow the solder. I do Canon flexes all day at 700 with a 4mm nozzle and low flow, maybe 3 seconds max, and my melt rate went way down once I stopped blasting cold joints. The iron trick works great on a two pad repair, but try it on a 40 pin ribbon and you will be there all afternoon dragging bridges. Sounds less like the tool is wrong and more like the settings and nozzle were wrong.

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