ok so hot air soldering is amazing.

@starkatt we really ought to try it sometime

it might make things easier for a project we're working on, because Linear apparently decided that it would be fine to have the exposed pad of an MSOP be the chip's *only* ground connection
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@starkatt do you have any advice for getting into it that might help? We've never really tried at all and I'm not sure what are good tools and the like.
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@Felthry I dunno what's ideal but this station is a well-regarded budget unit and seems fine https://www.tequipment.net/Quick/957DW+/Desoldering-Equipment/Rework-Stations/

and this paste also seems fine
https://www.tequipment.net/Chip-Quik/SMD291AX/Solder-Paste/

@starkatt that soldering station looks like a rebranded Yihua, and Yihua are usually pretty good for the price point from what we've heard!

i think we'd probably go for different paste, because we prefer to use lead-free when possible, but might try that for initial experiments since 63/37 is always nicer to work with. will have to do some research for what alloys are good for paste because i'm sure it's not the same as for wire solder, but SAC305 is probably fine
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@Felthry different air stations are needed for lead-free 'cause the temperature is so much higher.

@starkatt ah, that one doesn't go up high enough?

for soldering with an iron you can usually use the same station for either because it's adjustable (or in some cases like metcal or weller's magnestat--both of which are *really cool systems* by the way--you only need to change the tip, not the station), so it didn't occur to us that that might be a limitation with hot air

unless you use a bismuth solder i guess, but bismuth solder sucks
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@starkatt oh yeah out of curiosity what kinds of packages have you been able to solder with it? have you done anything with a big thermal pad? or something really hard to do by hand like QFN or something?
-F