Ersa Chiptool quick review

[nctnico]

With a larger rework job in sight I pulled the trigger on quality SMD tweezers from Ersa. So far I have used SMD tweezers from Ayoue (total crap!) and JBC (not that good either).
Ersa has two kinds of SMD tweezers: the chip tool and the vario tool. I choose the chip tool because it was relatively cheap as a package deal with a soldering station. I already have 3 Ersa soldering stations but the chip tool has an 8 pin plug where my existing soldering stations all have a 4 pin plug. I know most of the irons can be made to work on either system but I didn't want to take the chance with the chip tool because it appearantly has 2 heating elements in series. Also the hassle of making a conversion cable didn't cover the difference in price. So I ended up with yet another Ersa soldering station (the Digital 2000A):

And the chip tool with accesoires:

The chip tool comes with the tips which are inserted as shown in the picture. I bought the extra tips along with it. I don't think I'll ever use the needle pointed tips but I got them just in case. Tips this small usually don't allow enough heat to flow to a soldering joint. The tweezers can be adjusted for maximum and minimum opening widths. Not shown are a spunge and an abrassive brass wool soldering tip cleaner. I very much prefer to use a spunge because it is less likely to damage the soldering tip.

Ersa came up with a smart way to keep the tips aligned:

The cylinder thinghy with rings clamps onto the fixed part of the tweezers. The cylinder also has an alignment hole for a ring which can be clamped onto the tip. The alignment rings can be bought seperately so you can have a several sets of tips with the alignment rings in place so you don't have to re-align the tips everytime you swap tips in the chip tool. I have not seen this before on SMD tweezers I have used so far. Unfortunately a small Allen (hex) key wasn't included; I guess Ersa assumes a decent electronics lab has them. In my case that assumption was right! Oh crap... Looking at the pictures I now see the Allen key is attached to the tweezers    Where is the 'hit yourself with a hammer' emoticon?

For the rework job I needed to unsolder a couple of hundred 0402 and 0603 parts. I used the circular/edged tips for this job and it went flying. Ofcourse the tips get cruddy after a while but after a quick re-tinning the tips where good as new. Just as I expected based on my experience with soldering tips from Ersa.

There is also remarkably little play between the points of the tweezers. With the JBC SMD tweezers I have used previously I also had to use my fingers to align the tips but with the Ersa chip tool it is just point & squeeze to unsolder a component.

Besides the tips I got there are many other tips available for the chip tool to unsolder many other packages like SOIC, TQFP, etc but with 2x20W of power I doubt it works as well as hot air for bigger parts. OTOH the chip tool allows for a much more controlled application of heat compared to a hot air station.

I also bought these pliers to change tips since they where not that expensive and seemed like a nice tool to have:

BTW the pliers originally come with a spring to keep them open but since I really hate that I removed the spring.

edit: typos

[D3f1ant]

Thanks for this, well timed The tweezer design looks a bit more delicate/precision than the rather cumbersome looking tweezers by Hakko and Metcal I was looking at.
I don't see much Ersa gear in the wild around here...almost forgot they exist, its mostly Hakko for some reason.

[timofonic]

Damn! Those look really really amazing!

Can you please do photos or videos using them? I'm really very very curious about it.

Please please with sugar in top

[madires]

Desoldering SO-8 or 16 works also fine with the ChipTool. But for resistors, caps and diodes it's simply awesome. I got an i-Con2 which includes the i-Tool (pen-style soldering iron) and the ChipTool. With the i-Con you can select the ChipTool tip in a list to adjust the temperature offset for the different tip types.

[nctnico]

Damn! Those look really really amazing!

Can you please do photos or videos using them? I'm really very very curious about it.

A video is going to be difficult. I did take a picture of the tips after removing a couple of hundred components and re-tinning (lead free solder) a couple of times:

[Fraser]

Those hot tweezers look much better than my PACE TT-65 and OKI tweezers. Very nice indeed.

Fraser

[KL27x]

But for resistors, caps and diodes it's simply awesome.

A knife tip can be pretty great for these smaller passives, too.

I have used a hot air tool with a small nozzle, too. Just hold the tip over the part for a second, then swipe it off with the tip.

I have also used a regular iron tip and a blob of flux.

Between all four methods, the knife is the fastest and easiest for these small 1206 and smaller parts in a batch removal process (at least where there's room to use it). Because it works with essentially a dry tip; the sharp edge gets right down and hits the fillet on both beads, and the side of the knife heats the entire part, making things fast. And because the tip is dry, the removed part stays right on the side of the tip where it doesn't get in the way of the next part and doesn't need to be wiped or touched up until you have removed more than a few. Just set the tip down over the next part, pushing the last part up the side of the tip. After you build a stack of 3 or 4, move to a new part of the tip.  Continue on until the tip is full, then wipe off the tidy stacks of parts and continue. No solder, no flux, just removing parts and leaving fairly clean pads. I would preferentially use the knife tip for this, and use tweezers only where there is not enough room or enough pad to use a knife tip.

[timofonic]

Knife tip VS Chiptool.

Who will win?

[Fraser]

I have never used a knife tip but have seen Louis Rossmann extolling their virtues in his videos. They appear very versatile as he uses the longest side for reflowing rows of IC pins, and he sharp point to reflow individual pins on said IC's. I suspect you need to have more than one size of knife tip to cope with differing situations.

As to thermo tweezers, their past reputation has not been great. Many cheap versions are more trouble than they are worth and even my expensive PACE and OKI versions could be better and they are definitely fiddly to use. Interestingly Weller's WT50 was the same as the OKI tweezers but has now been updated to the WTA50. These ERSA tweezers appear to have had some thought put into their use and they do look very nice. But at around £300 in the UK, without the station, the darn well ought to !

I have seen a few videos on You Tube from iPad Rehab and the lady uses some really nice quality thermal tweezers for working on the nightmare that is the iphone. Hers looks really small with sharp tips. I suspect they are either Weller or Metcal ? Either way, they will be very expensive.  If Louis Rossmann is to be believed, such micro hot tweezers are essential if doing a lot of work on equipment like the iPhone due to the crowded and very heat intolerant components on the small pcbs.

I attach some pictures grabbed off the internet of my types of tweezers. They look positively archaic compared to the ERSA product !

Fraser

[sotos]

Knife tip VS Chiptool.

Who will win?

Can you give us a link to see what you mean with that knife tip tool.

[sotos]

This is also a nice smd tool which I am thinking to buy.

https://www.paceworldwide.com/products/handpieces/tweezers/mt100-minitweez-surface-mount-rework-tweezer-handpiece


http://export.farnell.com/pace/6010-0148-p1/handpiece-mt-100-intelliheat/dp/1775287?ost=6010-0148-P1&selectedCategoryId=&categoryNameResp=All%2BCategories&iscrfnonsku=false