I just came across this and thought I’d share. I’ve struggled to get headers and IC’s off boards after soldering them on backwards/upside down. This video shows a cool trick with a piece of copper wire that makes them very easy and quick to get off without expensive tooling. I was thoroughly impressed. Hope someone else finds this useful too.
This trick might be more useful for people who are budget constrained. In the past I’ve resorted to cutting the plastic between the headers (making them unusable), so this is a nice alternative without the need for another tool. If budget wasn’t an issue I’d likely buy a much nicer iron and an extra wide knife-style tip.
Haha, I’ve done that too. However sometimes it rips the pads off or otherwise damages the vias. So instead I cut them along the other axis (parallel to the PCB), then remove the remaining nibs.
These days I mostly use a hot air rework station though. In my city this is integrated with many soldering stations on the market, for maybe an extra 10$. I think mine is Yihua brand, it’s quite OK.