Looking for a soldering station with hot air under 70

linkref

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Hi,

I'm looking to buy it from aliexpress under 70

First of all, is it better to buy a soldering iron seperatly from the hot air station ?
Any advice on soldering station / hot air station or a station with the two ?
I heard about FX888 (no hot air) and the TS100 (no hot air and expensive)

Thanks
 

FAST6191

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By and large a tool that does multiple things is good at none of them. Far easier to get a basic but decent fire starter iron separately.
Whether temperature control is really worth it I don't know, and you can fake it with a variac (something you will probably end up with depending upon what area of electronics you go into but unless you are lucky that is going to be more than this) or possibly even a decent light dimmer switch as well. Possibly even less useful if you are getting hot air as you can vary temperatures with that both on the device and inherently (move the air wand further away or closer).
The main use for temperature is to either overcook the tip so something with a large thermal mass (big heatsink, mechanical join...) might melt before it runs out of heat in the tip (which if it is the basic pencil style as opposed to a well tip or wedge tip is going to be minimal) or crank it down for low melt stuff (rare in modern electronics, some crystals in old radios might be something more special) or small stuff you want to hold it on for some reason (get in, get out being my preferred method). Main perk then being a settable temperature thing you can use to melt plastics and maybe identify them.

70 Euros for hot air also places you in the cheap end of the range (aoyue being the usual brand but there might be others). I don't mind such things and while the several hundred efforts are nice enough in the end it is still a heater pack, an air pump and a nozzle to point it out of so nothing like the gulf between hardware shop horror story soldering iron, nice firestarter (I have used Mercury soldering irons for decades now) and full on weller or hakko stuff (many things will be compatible with the hakko tips as well, and as the tip is what meets the work the rest is... you could heat it up with blowtorch for what it matters for most things).

The main difference in hot air stations is whether the heat happens in the wand (makes it a bit heavier but some like it more) or in the station and the wand is basically a pipe and a bit of heat shielding. I like the latter myself (more than capable hands if it matters) but there is not a lot in it.
 

linkref

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Thanks for you message :)
I think i will end up buying soldering iron seperately from hot air station :) !

Do you have any advice on a good combo :) ?
 

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