Insight - How Desoldering Pump works

Table of Contents:

  1. Insight - How Desoldering Pump works
  2. Internal Structure
  3. Working
  4. Structure of Piston

 

DESOLDERING is the process of removing soldered components from a circuit made on PCB. Desoldering pump along with the soldering iron is used for this purpose. A desoldering pump also known as solder sucker is a small mechanical device which sucks the liquid/molten solder from the joint where the components are mounted. In order to desolder a component from the PCB, we first heat up the solder joint with the soldering iron till the solder liquefies/melts. At the same moment we actuate the soldering pump by pressing the trigger lever and bring the tip over the molten metal and pull the trigger back by pressing a button shown in the below image. At this instant the lever is pulled back and the tip of the pump sucks the molten solder. This process is repeated until all the residue solder is sucked by the pump and the hole on the PCB is clear to solder a fresh component.

 

Desoldering Pump

 
Above image shows a desoldering pump - head, trigger and button of the soldering pump are marked. To actuate the pump the lever is pressed until there is a click sound which indicates that the lever will remain locked in the same position.
 

 
Desoldering pump bottom head
 
The desoldering pump’s bottom head contains a hole through which the molten solder is sucked when the pump is triggered. The head is designed such that the extracted solder does not solidify and block it, consequently the sucked metal can be removed and discarded easily.