Item — HN Reader

>Solder suckers are nice when they work, though!

They are great things once you learn their quirks.

Cut a notch in the nozzle that is slightly smaller than your iron's tip, a few uses will mold that notch to your iron's tip so you can keep the iron on the joint when sucking without affecting the seal.

Add more solder to the joint before sucking, this will help get a good seal as the sucker's tip will sit in that solder. The sucker will have no issues getting the excess.

Don't force sucked solder out through the nozzle, if the piston is more difficult than normal to depress than unscrew the end to clear the solder, forcing it through will only distort the nozzle and shorten its life.

Take the time to clean and lubricate at the end of the day. Bits of solder which get trapped in the sucker chew up the o-rings and ruins the vacuum. Take it apart, run a small stiff bottle brush through the body a few times to remove any solder, remove any solder in the nozzle, clean the plunger. Apply petroleum jelly to all threads and the plunger, reassemble.

If function quickly degrades after cleaning/lubricating than your o-rings are worn, replace them. O-rings are cheap, keep a supply on hand.

1 comments

All good pieces of advice.

I also want to throw out a recommendation for this sucker in particular: https://www.engineertools-jp.com/ss02

I kind of impulse-bought that recently and had to repair a device where the AC line cord was damaged and is soldered directly to the board. I heated up the joint and sucked out what seemed like a gallon of solder in one go; the wire then just fell out with no problem. I was very very impressed. For $22, worth having in your toolbox if you ever interact with large quantities of solder that may be to removed.

I concur. It works exactly how you expect a solder sucker is supposed to. It gobble up the solder so good it's a joy to use.

I regret not having known about this tool years ago. I wasted so much time and frustration on the ubiquitous cheap solder sucker. It's a world of difference.

Be careful with these. If you use one with a crap iron or overheat the joint it'll suck the traces off the board too. They should only be used with a decent temperature controlled iron.

Sucking solder without temperature control is no different than soldering without temperature control. If you are not good at spotting when the solder goes liquid or using a sort of solder which is difficult to see when it goes liquid than just apply solder as you heat it as you would if you were initially making the joint, solder touches the pin and not the iron's tip, when the solder starts to flow put down the solder and grab the sucker, suck. No need to rush when getting the sucker, you have a second or two still before the entire joint has gone liquid and a few seconds after that before you are at risk of overheating assuming you are using a properly sized iron for the job.

This company also makes amazing pliers!