HowTo: Solder by hand - A better solder sucker

A modern replacement for the old fashioned solder sucker ball.

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I mentioned quite a while back that I don’t like the typical desoldering pumps because they tend to kick the tip of the soldering iron across the PCB, often times damaging the plated through holes in the process.

While the solder sucker balls won’t damage your PCB, they can be quite time consuming and aggravating to use - they don’t provide a lot of suction, and you have to clean the nozzle after every “suck.” Often times, you can’t even get a really good one, either. Many newer ones have plastic tips that melt on the hot tip of the soldering iron.

While helping to organize and equip a Repair Café here where I live, I found a replacement for the old solder sucker ball. It is far more effective (it sucks harder) than the old red solder sucker balls, and it won’t kill your PCBs like many other mechanical desoldering pumps.

This is the desoldering pump I’ve found that works well:

Good desoldering pump

Compare that to this one that will kill your PCBs:

Bad desoldering pump

The main difference is one that you can’t see in the photos.

When you press the plunger on the good desoldering pump, the rod pops back up. When you trigger the pump, all that moves is the piston inside the pump cylinder.

When you press the plunger on the bad desoldering pump, the entire rod stays depressed. When you trigger the pump, the piston in the cylinder pops up (just like in the good pump,) but the pushrod and the thumb pad pop up, too.

There’s far more moving mass in the bad pump than in the good pump. That means there’s less kick from the good pump. Less kick means it is far less likely to damage your PCB.

I used the one we bought for the Repair Café a few times, then ordered one for myself - it was that much better than both the old red desoldering balls and the other desoldering pumps I’ve used.

Mine came in yesterday, along with some replacement parts I’d ordered to get my Bigfoot sewing machine motor control running again.

Cleaning up the Bigfoot PCB

Each hole was cleared by a single “suck” from the new pump. It was much quicker than my old red desoldering ball, and none of the through holes was damaged.

When you go to look for a new desoldering pump, look for one like the plastic one I showed above. Besides being quicker and not destroying you PCB, it is also antistatic so you won’t accidentally zap any ESD sensitive parts on your circuit board.

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