Low effort: unboxing my new desoldering gun (with a new camera)

I have a new filming setup and as this is very much in beta test, I don't want to risk losing a lot of footage on a major project if something goes wrong. Let's do a nice simple loweffort unboxing. So, this is a toy I have been promising myself for a while. So, let's open this up. It's fresh from Amazon. I think it's a vacuum desoldering station. Anyone who's watched me on this channel try to desolder stuff with one of these horrible solder suckers knows just how much I hate it. Ooh wow, that smell. So many vox. Let me get this unpacked onto the workbench and then we can take a look at it. So, the issue with the camera is that I've been doing all my recording up to now with a DSLR mounted above the workbench, which is honestly great. The quality is brilliant, except for tax reasons, it will only record up to 20 minutes at a time. It won't do 4K 60, and its ability to preview is very limited because it won't output HDMI while it's recording. So, I have replaced it with the thing that's currently being triled, which you're looking at of now, which is actually a microscope/security camera that does do 4K 60 connected via a very small C lens or possibly CS lens. And I'm a little bit concerned that once I start editing it, it will all turn out to be rubbish. I have observed that the corners of the screen are a little bit fuzzy. It's in focus in the middle, but I won't know whether it's actually adequate until I finish editing something together. Hence, this and this is my new desoldering gun, which will allow me to take stuff, components rather, of PCBs with hopefully minimal effort. And I'm rather confused because this thing which is supposed to suck the solder out, there is no hole in the end. So, not sure how that's going to work. There are some other nozzles. These also do not have holes in the end. I wonder if that's actually plugged with solder and once I turn it on, it will melt. But anyway, what have we got? We've got a respectably chunky holder. Uh ah like that. The actual gun itself where it's got a trigger here. This bit heats up. These tubes are connected to the big air pump which is this brick here. When I pull the trigger, it will suck hard. Solder goes through the hole that may or may not be in the end of this nozzle into this holding reservoir. And I then empty that at intervals. Plastic bag. Here there are some accessories. Let's take a look at that later. This is the guts of the machine. And this is a Yua 948D1 desoldering station. Fresh out of China. There's a lot of these. They're all called 948. They're all by different manufacturers. This one has a reputation for being reasonably good. It cost meund something allpurpose currency units. I did look at getting an actual name brand one, but that would have cost me about 800 allpurpose currency units. So, I decided not to. So, we got a little screen which tilts so that you can see it. It's got a plastic thing on it which I can peel off. It seems to be covered in spots. Yeah, my fingers are covered in grease. Uh, some controls. this thing. Um, presume that's the air intake, I think. Ah, no, it's not. That's the suction port. This is the power lead for the actual desoldering gun itself, which goes in here. And the ring does up, and this thing just pushes on here. Super high-tech. Over on this side, we have the power cable, which has a Euro plug on it, which I'll need to cut off and replace with the Swiss one, a packet of accessories. What have we got? Some plastic bags, a wire, banana plug on one end, and a crocodile clip on the other. I assume it's for grounding. Oh, yeah. The back of this has got the earth port for the crocodile clip. Never seen one of those on a soldering station. We've got a replacement one of them. Some replacement ones of them. These are the bits that go inside the solder capture thing. Some replacement air filters. a tube. I don't think this is a replacement tube for this because this is or really should be made out of glass cuz it's going to have molten metal on the inside of it. So, I'm not sure what this is for. We'll find out later. And we got these. These are for cleaning the nozzle. You push them up and clear the solder out of the various tubes that the thing is made of. [snorts] And more cleaning things. Oh, yes. And we've got one of these. I do not know what this is. This looks like this is supposed to go through here and clip. Okay. Oh, yeah. And of course, we've got the packet of nozzles. So, let's take a look at the documentation. We've got two. We've got this one, which is in English, German, Italian, French, and Spanish. We've got this one which is in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. How are these different important safeguards? Oh, right. This is just the warnings, which I'm going to guess can be boiled down to this thing makes molten metal in your lap. Don't burn yourself or set fire to anything. So, this would be the actual instructions, which I am going to look at because I think I'm going to need to I've never used one of these. Have I mentioned that, right? These last two pages contain the bulk of it. Okay, so this is instructions on how to desolder things. You put the hot tip of the nozzle over the joint. You wait for all the solder to melt. You pull the trigger and it will suck the solder off the joint and through the hole. That's important into the catch reservoir. One interesting thing about these is if it doesn't work the first time, you have to add more solder and do it again because it relies on the liquid solder forming a vacuum seal around the nozzle. Otherwise, it just sucks air and doesn't suck solder. says there's a little indicator on the side. That will be this that tells you when the thing is full. And the cleaning chamber, filtered chamber, can only be removed after the desoldering has fully cooled. Apparently, I need snow or ice to make that work. So, to open it, we do this. We do this and then this thing comes out and this reveals in super microscope vision the rubber seal nipple thing that holds it to the front of the desoldering thing. I have run out of words because this thing won't come off. Uh, we've got a filter and we've got the metal spring and a little metal cross that holds the spring in place. Yeah. Okay. I'll try not disassembling that at this point. That goes back in there. So, this thing sticks on here more or less. No, it doesn't. This thing goes on here. Does it matter that there's a little notch out of it? Hopefully not. This goes on here. Clips into place and all clicks together. Okay. And this thing opens up to reveal the nozzle and the heating element. And in very out of focus blurry vision, you can see the little hole that it sucks through. Okay. Well, there's one more thing left to do and then let's try firing it up and see if it actually works. And that thing is, of course, to replace the plug because this plug does me no good here. Here we go. This is a European plug. Two pins and earth there. It goes into a round receptacle with a single pin sticking out that goes into the earth hole or a thing that rubs against this strip here. And these two pins are almost but not quite compatible with many other forms of two pin plug. However, I'm in Switzerland and Switzerland uses these. And this has your two uh pins for the actual current which is live and neutral and a single earth. And those two pins are very nearly but not quite the same form factor as the two pins on this. So there is a thing called the Euro plug which has got two pins on it which are bendy which you can push approximately into a wide variety of different sockets in different countries and it is about as sketchy as you think it is. But I have seen worse plugs in some countries in the world. I of course come from Britain, which means I am very snobbish about British plugs and sockets. Swiss plugs are not fused, which British ones are, but apart from that, they're actually pretty decent. So, we finally peel the outer insulation back. Three wires over here in neuroland live earth neutral. Okay, this bit comes out. I said there we go. It comes out giving me access to the screw terminals. The terminals are actually labeled but not here. They're labeled here. And it does actually matter which way up this is. So this this is the wrong way round. Has to be this way round. In fact, it won't let you reassemble the thing if it's backwards. But that means that this one is neutral. So let's do that first. Okay. So, this now clips back into the plug like so. And fold it back like this. And the wire goes in like this. And I will actually It's got twisted. And we need to untwist it so that this screw post isn't in the way. And then we do it up again. And then this thing goes back on. And And let's take this off again. And just double check to make sure I did everything right. L Brown Live. So, all I need to do now is to plug it in and then we'll find out if I can work it. Okay, it's all plugged in and ready to go. Is my hand unusually pink. Wonder if a camera settings changed. I've got this old PCB which came off a power supply. Let's try removing some stuff from it. So, switch on Okay, now I've got the manual here and it says that these buttons do something. Ah, it is now heating up. What does this do? Nothing. Apparently, this one I have no idea what I'm doing. This looks like temperature. There we go. Has anything happened? The end's smoking. Right. It's still preheating. I need to wait. There's something here about temperature conversion. No, that's up and down. Hold for two seconds. Uh, no. Let's not do that. Yeah, these instructions are incomprehensible. Ah, it's doing something. And yes, look, there's a hole there. Okay, so pick a component. There's a diode there. So, we should be able to simply do this. And I think that's actually worked. That is miraculous. Using the manual solder sucker is so much pain. That's incredible. Well, that was so easy. Wow. Let's try I want to try this transformer, which I think are these eight holes. So, I think that idea is actually working. Oops. My thought was that maybe the wire was too thick for the nozzle and need to switch to the other nozzle. But it does look like this all fits. I think I Yeah, these are actually pretty thick wires. It's not happy. It's working, but it wants the next nozzle. Yeah, that one has not. There we go. Melted properly. Okay. It's wobbling, but it's not coming off. Here's the problem. It's stuck on with glue. So, the desoldering gun has actually managed to desolder it properly. It's just this gummy stuff is holding it on. That's incredible. I should have got one of these years ago. So, you've got this chunky transistor here. So, so easy. As I said, this is all power supply stuff. So, it's all big coily things. Speaking of which, here is a big coily thing. There you go. So, that should be one side of it. And the other side is this row here. So, this is not coming off. Why is it not coming off? And there we have it. A coily thing. I'm not quite sure what this is. Some kind of inductive component. Inductance is a bit of a black art for me. It's really heavy. But yeah, this is miraculous. I am going to throw away that old solder sucker. And this is it. This is the thing I was previously using. It's a spring-loaded plunger. You push this down. You apply your soldering iron to the component. You jam the thing on. And then quickly before the solder melt, you push the button and it's supposed to suck the solder up into this thing. It doesn't work. This thing is complete junk. This This is great. Now, don't want to take too much stuff of this cuz then I've got to put it somewhere. Here is a smaller, much more delicate board. This is actually the control board from the printer, which I dripped apart in my last video. Let's try and get this USB socket off. So there's these four connections that actually hold it to the board and then these four connections which are the electrical contacts. So, let's do these first cuz these are much smaller. Okay, now these uh if I can actually make this work. If I zoom in, you can see that these are forked pins. So, I don't think this thing with its round nozzle is actually going to work. There are some more nozzles. This is the biggest one, but even so, I don't think that's big enough to go over the forked pin here. So, I think that one is a non-starter. So, that is good to know. What else have we got? Ethernet socket. Some telephone sockets. They do the same thing. We've got these Molex connectors. Molex header connectors that are made out of very thin plastic. So, let's have a go at these and see if I can do it without melting them. >> [music] >> Some of the pins still have solder around them. [music] And out it comes. So, it's a little bit melty. This pin has moved slightly. It just pushes back into place. I think that is actually perfectly adequate to put back on a board. I would never have dared tried to desolder one of these with the plunger. So, things I'm not brilliantly pleased with is it's got a bit of a tendency to jam in the holder. Needing a bit of a shake to get it off. I suspect that's possibly just me put putting it back incorrectly. That seems to be happy. Also, it does make a noise. which is of course the vacuum pump in the box itself. And that capacitor is not coming out. Yeah. Let's try putting some more solder on cuz as I said, it needs to make a liquid seal around the pin. Yes, that's much better. Anyway, I was talking about the noise. It's not loud, but it's definitely there. I think I can Oh, the cap just fell straight out. Wow, that's so different from using the plunger. That's brilliant. So, yes, I think I can use this thing without annoying the neighbors downstairs, which is nice. I've turned it off. It is now coolish. Cool enough to touch. Let's open it up and see where the solder went. The answer is through this hole. So, let's hook out this filter again. manual seems to suggest that this bit comes out. Interesting. It seems to be stuck onto the glass. I hope I haven't broken something. And there is the solder inside the spring. Not a great deal of solder. Oh, right. It is actually There you go. And it's sort of glued down here. I am not sure the springs are particularly cleanable to be honest. It seem to suggest that I might need to get a new one. I assume it's stainless steel which the solder won't stick to. Oh yeah, it's stuck down there. And yeah, I think this will fill up with solder and then I expect I could probably take a blowtorrch to it to melt the solder and cause it to fall out. But there you are. So that is interesting. Anyway, let's reassemble like that and like that and like that. Easy. And in fact, there is one other thing that I need to do, which is to take the lid off this thing and look to see whether stuff like earth wires are correctly, you know, earthed. Okay. And this metal thing slides off revealing the works. So, we have Wow. Strong electronic smell, the power supply, the computer, the vacuum pump, and that is basically it. Okay, what have we got in the way of dodgginess? Well, there is the vacuum outlet and that silicone tube connects it to the pump. The earth is here, which is that banana plug thing, which goes to the case. That good. The earth from the mains is that yellow spade connector which goes to the same screw terminal. Excellent. So, the case is properly earthed. On the front side, we've got the silicone tube that goes to the external port. Nothing of great interest there. the power switch which is in line with the live wire. I can't remember which one is live to be honest. Ah, this actually tells me it is labeled L. Yes, that is the live wire. So, that is good. You do have to be careful with devices where they put the switch by mistake in with the neutral because it means that if there's some kind of short or you take the lid off and it's still plugged in, the live is still connected to all the circuitry which means you can get a shock off it. Build quality seems decent. It's pretty robust. Things are fastened down. Nothing is wobbly. Yeah, I'm reasonably pleased with that. So, first impressions of this thing, I am well pleased. This is going to make desoldering stuff so much easier. Like nitrivial compared to the horrible nightmare it's been in the past. So, yes, I wish I got one of these much much sooner and I'm very much looking forward to using this. So, that is great. And for anyone else out there, if you're thinking of desoldering things, they're not that expensive. Get one. Anyway, I'm also trying to test the camera. Yeah. So, postedit me here, you might have noticed that the color went all weird during the second half of the video. That's because I split the filming over two days. It turns out that if you turn this camera off and then turn it on again, the settings are all just a bit weird. I don't think it's very good at remembering what all the various image settings like hue and gamma and so on are supposed to be set to. I also found that the automatic white balance feature is broken in a really interesting way, which is that if you turn it off, all the colors go anyhow. The setting which you can control does change the color of the image to all kinds of weird bright hues except if you set it to 75 at which point it looks like this. Let me demonstrate. Okay. So, if I turn the automatic white balance off now, it goes green. Now, I can change the level. So, it's currently set to 75. If I set it to 74, it goes like this. If I set it back to 75, back to normal. And the hue setting is equally strange. The default is 60, which looks like this. So now I've gone all unsavory purple. The number varies from N to 120. N looks like this. So even more purple. 120 looks like this. Which I would consider to be like representative of real life. And this is what I think the first half of the video was recorded as. So that's all deeply weird. I suspect the firmware in this thing has definite bugs. That said, I can't really complain too much about the image quality, which is honestly fine. It zooms in. It records 60 frames per second 4K. I think it looks all right. It would be nice if I could, you know, actually turn the automatic white balance off because otherwise things change color depending. Uh, interesting. In my fiddling, I seem to have actually turned the automatic white balance off. Okay. Yes, I don't know what's going on here. I think the firmware's got bugs. It will require some fiddling to work around these. I think I can beat it into shape that I can actually use this for filming. My DSLR didn't have these problems, but then again, my DSLR would only record 20 minutes at a time and I didn't get a proper preview. So, yeah, I think I am honestly reasonably satisfied with this and I am going to continue trying to use it for projects as I will this thing. I'm very much looking forward to using this. I have some recapping projects that have been on hold because I simply couldn't face desoldering a lot of caps with this. Now I look at this, I notice that the color of the blue plastic here is completely different on the screen as it is in real life. Yeah, I have some work to do here, but I'll do that off camera. Anyway, I hope somebody out there enjoyed this ramble through some of my new toys. They will be back. As always, I hope you all enjoyed this video. Please let me know what you think in the comments and I will see you all next time in hopefully better color rendition.