I'm completely new at this, working on some practice boards. And I have a blob of lead free solder that I'm having difficulty removing with a wick. The wick keeps sticking to it and not picking up the solder. Please help sorry for the rookie mistake questions.
What iron are you using? Sounds like you do not have enough heat transfer. Lead free is awful. What you can do is mix leaded solder in it to help lower the melt temp or use low melt. But if your doing practice boards I would stay away from low melt because it will cost tons of money using that. I would just use leaded solder.
Try using a low melt solder first.
If the board is too tick you need to apply some pre-heat.
The wick sticking to the solder also suggests that the iron may not be sized correctly for the task at hand. If enough heat is not present, you will get some melting but insufficient heat to allow the wick to work properly. The suggestion to use low melt solder is a good one and will allow the use of a marginally sized iron by lowering the overall melting temp of the solder.
@abrsvcs @masterross @juice
Thank you everyone, I'm using a Yihua 8786, I'll ry to use some low melt solder and see how that works. Do you guys suggest I use a bigger tip? The board is a practice board of a Nintendo switch.
Hey, ya I would try a bigger tip. I used Yihua 8786 before and I would suggest low melt with that iron. When using wick you want the most heat transfer you can get. Since your unit has hot air and assuming you have not plastic connectors around you can use both iron and the hot air to help aid at getting the board to the right temp. But for sure use low melt. Also look in to a TS100 iron with a 24v adapter it would be a good upgrade for you some day and the tips are the newer style with better heat transfer and thermal recovery.
Dip your wick in liquid flux first, let it soak with flux 😉
I'm completely new at this, working on some practice boards. And I have a blob of lead free solder that I'm having difficulty removing with a wick. The wick keeps sticking to it and not picking up the solder. Please help sorry for the rookie mistake questions.
Michael, you *may* have a combination problem. Insufficient soldering tip temperature or the size of the tip relative to the size of the area you're trying to de-solder. Remeber too, that lead-free solder is almost always difficult to deal with. Try two things: After you've adjusted your iron temperature/tip type, add a non-acid type flux like Amtech NC-559 or Kester 186 to the lead-free solder. You might also want to "dope" the joint you're working on with some leaded type solder like 63/37 alloy or one of the low melting point types like ChipQuick PLUS flux. You've got to make sure your tip is hot enough and has enough surface area to deal with heating not only the solder, the surface area, but the de-soldering wick as well; remember that copper desoldering wick sucks up heat like crazy (watch your fingers!).
Hope this helps!