If you have the budget the Hakko desoldering gun is a huge huge improvement over desoldering by hand w copper. I've gone from hating it to desoldering junk to harvest parts because it's so easy.
I don't fully agree. Hakko is high quality, quiet, but also VERY expensive (300+ bucks) and the gun contains the vacuum pump which makes it HEAVY and not easy to work with for longer than a few minutes.
The ZD-8965 is cheaper (not as high quality but good enough and only around 100 bucks), has a separated station with a very light gun, that is pretty easy to work with and it is significantly smaller more silent than other ZD-* models. Another advantage is that the gun can be replaced for around 25 bucks, so if you ever drop it or it gets leaky, you don't have to invest another 100 bucks.
I used it for desoldering / mill maxing multiple Logitech G515 keyboards with 88 switches (264 solder joints) and I worked through a whole keyboard with one go - no cleaning, no clog, no overheat.
As someone who has only touched one once, heat guns kind of scare me mostly because the airflow is invisible. I have destroyed things with it and almost burned myself.
It's hard for me to gauge if you have too much or too little heat on something.
Too far away it's doing nothing and too close you're frying a piece, and there is no indication where on that range you are without some learned intuition.
The Hakko desoldering gun he’s talking about is the FR-301 (or close equivalent), which is a soldering iron with a hollow tip that the gun has a vacuum pump that can suck solder out through the hollow tip.
It’s not a hot air soldering station.
After decades of using copper braid, I recently splurged for the 301 and wish I’d done it sooner. My teen kid could effortlessly desolder the button on his worn out gaming mouse with it after 30 seconds of training (me demoing how to use it).
You can buy the Japanese version, desolder 1 resistor, and solder in two replacements to adapt it from Japanese 100VAC to US 120VAC and save about $100, plus it will remind you how awful desoldering with braid is by comparison. It takes 30 very unhurried minutes at most to do the mod.
