CREWORKS 858D Rework Station, 110V SMD Soldering Rework Station with Hot Air Heat Gun Set, LED Digital Temperature Display Screen Electric Desoldering Welding Iron Kit for Electronics Repairing

Works great!!!I purchased this to put some ssop and qfn stuff onto some breakout boards for some prototypes so my giganto man thumbfingers could actually work with them in human usable format! It’s obviously a cheap thing but seems well made enough to last quite a while. The soldering Iron is actually pretty fantastic, with a great selection of tips for whatever you want to do. I’ve only been soldering small stuff but it seems to hold its heat well and heat up fast enough. (My other irons are a Weller something which is a workhorse, and a bs temperature controllable hardware store nightmare that I should probably sacrifice to the gods of broken electronics). I would say perhaps I like using the iron just as much as the Weller?I’m not sure if it’ll hold up after heavy use, but time will tell, it would seem from other reviews that they are quite friendly about parts and service..... ‽The heat gun blew hot air and melted the solder well on the smd components. (It did the job! Yay!!)I’d say this is great for beginners and the middle ground of people getting into smd rework.

This is the first hot-air rework station I've ever owned. As such, I cannot compare it directly to any other rework stations as I have no experience with them.However, I do give this station 5 stars because it works and it does what its supposed to do.* Soldering iron is quite lightweight with a sufficiently long cord I can have the station at the edge of my desk and the pencil will easily reach my work surface.* Soldering iron produces enough heat to get the job done. So far I've only used the default fine tip for soldering wires on flashlight parts.* The iron came with a set of alternate bits and I have no doubt that if I needed more heat I could swap in a bigger bit to get more surface area on the target.* Controls are simple and intuitive: buttons on either side control temperature, fanspeed control in the center for hot air gun. On-off switches between the cords. Hot air gun goes into standby automatically when placed into its cradle (if power to it is on).* Hot air rework station works well. It gets hot enough to melt solder, which is what I got it for.* Entire unit is very quiet when on.* Price is right - this is one of the cheaper hot-air rework stations on Amazon.What could be better:* Soldering iron base is very lightweight and tends not to stay in place. I solved this by using a couple pieces of Gaffer's tape to stick the base to the top of the station.

I've used this for a couple months in building boards comprised of 0805 components down to as small as 0402. The biggest solder patch I've melted was the heat sink tab on a TO-220 mosfet, which took turning up the heat and air a bit but it worked. I use solder paste that melts at 137C and there are no issues melting it. This unit might struggle with reflowing big chips with higher melting point solder but I don't know cause that's not what I use it for.The bad news, and the reason why I had to deduct a star is that my unit has a quirk which may or may not be the same across units. When you first pick up the iron after it's cooled down to idle, the temperature readout ticks up to the temperature you've set and then stays there, making you think that youre ready to solder. Let's say you set it to 170, you pick up the iron, and the readout starts clicking up until it hits 170. If at this point you set the iron back down in the holster, the readout will start counting down until it reaches 100C, trouble is, as soon as it's back in the holster the readout will reveal that the actual temperature is around 230C. At this point what I do is set the air to max and let it sit there for like 30 seconds as it vents some of the heat and counts down to the temperature I was looking for. Once it's there, I pick it back up and set the air back to between 1-2. At this point, it regulates it's temperature fine, it doesnt climb back up to the 200's. It seems that maybe it's designed to heat up so quickly when you pick it back up that it automatically overshoots lower temperatures. If you set it to something higher like 250c, this maybe wouldnt be an issue.That all said, I paid 40 dollars for it and it works great aside from this extra step at startup so I don't regret the purchase.

The 858D gets the job done at a price that can't be beat, and this particular version of it I was pleasantly surprised by. The build quality is better than expected. First thing I did was disassemble it and all soldering was well done, connections were secure, and silicone or solastic had been applied to secure key components which was a nice surprise. The pick up detection works reasonably well, the case is solid, which is good because I intend to modify it to solve the one issue I have with it - on a small bench it is difficult to find a good spot to use it and keep it so when I put it down it doesn't blast me with hot air, a couple holes in the side to allow for mounting the air gun facing the opposite direction would be great!But overall a very good product for the price, controls feel great and are responsive - feels like it should cost more - good design. I would support this company and look for their other products if they deliver similar quality across the board.Only reason accuracy is rated a bit lower is thermocouple is located at the back of the heat sink on the gun, properly calibrated this could work decent enough, and it does work plenty well enough for any non-automated use, so do not let this deter you from considering it unless you plan to build some sort of CNC reflow or something out of it, at which case - well yeah actually have at it...