Wasted $150 on a cheap hot air station that failed after 3 weeks

Picked up a no-name hot air station from an online auction for $150 back in February... worked okay for the first couple of repairs, then the heating element just died mid-job on a laptop motherboard. I cracked the board prying off a stubborn chip while it was cooling down, so now I'm out $150 plus the cost of the board. Has anyone else had bad luck with those budget rework stations from random sellers?

2 comments

2 Comments

jaken2323d agoMost Upvoted

50 degrees over what you set it to? That's wild. I knew cheap stations weren't great but that's a whole different level of bad if true. Makes me wonder if my element dying was the least of my problems, maybe the board was getting cooked way before that. Did you figure out how to recalibrate yours or did you just send it back?

valsullivan23d ago

Honestly, that's rough. Did you check the thermocouple before the element died? I've seen those cheap stations run way hot from the start, like 50 degrees over what you set it to, which makes prying stuff way harder than it needs to be. I'm wondering if it was cooking the board the whole time and you just didn't notice until the element gave out.