Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

[caspian]

Dear Technicians,
Soldering wick is expensive.
Is there any way to clean and reuse a used soldering wick?
or
Is there any thing cheap among home tools which can be used instead of soldering wick?

[R_J]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

In a word, No. for removing large amounts of solder from larger connections, you could use a desoldering pump, but don't use it on small delicate traces as you can lift them.

[Fast Alpha]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

A pencil for clearing old the hole, heat the solder first to melt then add a pointy pencil tip to clear it.

Solder does not stick to stainless steel, maybe some steel to scoop up the solder?

[caspian]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

It would be great if solder could be cleaned from solder pads by some cheap way or if solder could be cleaned from a used soldering wick by some cheap way.
I think cleaning soldering wick seems more practical. For example, we can put a used soldering wick in a hot substance so that solder gets melted and then gets out of the soldering wick.
Is there such a method?

[stj]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

no.

there are other ways to clean off solder though - but the tools cost more.

[petehall347]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

look for acid that eats solder and not copper .
or use electrolysis .
let us know how you get on ..
this has sparked something off with me .
clean copper is worth lots more see .

[eccerr0r]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

Copper is more reactive than lead or tin, so likely you can't get an acid that will eat solder (one for lead and one for tin) but leave copper; also you have oxides to deal with. The only thing that separates copper, tin, and lead is heat - copper has the highest melting point of the three, but they will all want to stick together no matter what. After all, wick is made of the same stuff as wire.

[stj]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

there are chemicals that will eat tin/lead but leave copper,
there are company's that can strip expensive chips and re-plate them to RoHS standards.
they can also re-ball using robotic desoldering units that use a laser!!

however - it's not cheap - so you only do it for rare or expensive stuff.

[momaka]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

Dear Technicians,
Soldering wick is expensive.
Is there any way to clean and reuse a used soldering wick?

No.
As others said, copper and solder like to stick together. That's why soldering wick works.

Is there any thing cheap among home tools which can be used instead of soldering wick?

Depends on what you are trying to do.

If you just want to clear holes (vias) from capacitors and other through-hole components, you can use a stainless steel needle to punch through the holes while heating them with your iron.

If you want to clean small SMD pads, an iron with a sharp copper tip *could* do that, but it takes some practice. I do it all the time with my 30W Radio Shack iron. Its stock copper pencil tip became a spoon-like shape with sharp edges a long time ago (from normal use). When I swipe the tip on a well-fluxed BGA pad, I can usually scoop most of the solder out of it and barely leave anything behind.

Now if you are doing BGA work and need to clean BGA pads.... there's no replacement for wick. However, if you want to use less, then try to pick up as much of the old solder as possible with a hot sharp tip.
When I used to do BGA work, I could last 2-3 times longer with my wick compared to other techs with this method. And this method did not do any more damage to the board.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

There is replacement for wick in BGA rework: A spatula made of high temperature silicone. I never believed it until i tried it myself and it works a treat. You may still have to use wick for the last pass but it sure cuts down on the amount of wick you need, also reduces the risk of pulling pads or scratching the solder mask to basically zero.

[momaka]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

There is replacement for wick in BGA rework: A spatula made of high temperature silicone. I never believed it until i tried it myself and it works a treat. You may still have to use wick for the last pass but it sure cuts down on the amount of wick you need, also reduces the risk of pulling pads or scratching the solder mask to basically zero.

Interesting.

I knew high temperature silicone could be used to clean up solder pads, but I never thought about it for BGA. Genius!

That said, another way to minimize wick use is to use a fairly large chisel tip to move a solder pool/blob around the BGA area and basically pickup all the solder that you can without wick (the solder will try to stick to your liquid solder pool/blob and very little will remain on the pads). I used to do this all the time and used 3-5 times less wick than most coworkers back when I was ballin' with Xbox 360s.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

That said, another way to minimize wick use is to use a fairly large chisel tip to move a solder pool/blob around the BGA area and basically pickup all the solder that you can without wick

That goes without saying.

[Snayperskaya]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

Can you make soldering wick by reusing old coaxial cables' copper mesh? Does it need a reagent/flux to increase the solder absorption?

[eccerr0r]

Re: Soldering Wick Reuse or Replacement

Coax cable copper mesh has some problems:
1 - You'll need to get some that have very fine mesh, a lot of it is pretty coarse and doesn't have as much surface area as real wick
2 - All of the used cable I've seen, the shield braid mesh tends to be quite oxidized. Some of it doesn't seem to be copper but rather seems to be steel. Of course if you can get copper, that's best.
3 - yes, you need lots of flux.