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By robin, March 9, 2010 5:18 pm

We finally had a nice warm day here in Manitoba, so outdoor experimenting was finally a go : ). I had tried removing components from old boards with hot cooking oil before and it worked somewhat well. The temperature is right (220C+), but it was a bit messy, and while the solder melted, it didn’t flow out of the board without a whack.

The new theory was that if the cooking oil was added to sand, it could still regulate the temperature, and the sand could act like a large soldering wick, and suck out the solder as well. Lo and behold, it worked great!

I did this outdoor as there is a certain smell involved. I’d recommend old clothes and not standing down wind as well. I had teflon and steel skillets from the thrift shop, the steel one worked better as it got hotter (not sure if that is a teflon thing, or just that particular brand). I used canola oil because that is what I had, peanut oil does get hotter though, and motor oil might work too.

The smell of cooking boards in the morning.

Check to make sure things are getting hot enough

a nice power supply board. Never did like TRS-80’s.

Parts can be pulled out with a glove, I held the board down with a scraper in the other hand sometimes.

A bunch of memory chips and holders. Even the holders come out unscathed!

From a video recorder – there was a little damage to the outer plastic holder, but only because I pulled it too early.

See how the solder was sucked right off the board. Hey, maybe I could reuse that too ; ).

I feel like a big order just arrived from Digikey. Well almost : ).