Alex RichThere have been questions about how the nylon Stickvise jaws will hold up to hot air rework. I did a quick test today and found they hold up fairly well. I set my hot air station to 800 F and installed a neck-down attachment. I clamped in a PCB that was lying around and attempted to desolder a crystal right next to one of the jaws. I held heat on the part for about 10-20 seconds and could clearly see the solder liquefy. I picked the part up with tweezers, turned off the heat gun and...
...the jaws were perfectly fine. See the desoldered crystal on the top right of the board.
close up shot of the jaws with PCB removed, I circled the affected area. Not too bad. I ran out of time today but may try to remove some of the bigger ICs next and see if I damage the jaws.
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great idea, maybe I will post a tutorial on that method. Would work for reflow potentially too.
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A quick and dirty hack for hot air reflow is to use FR4 scrap (e.g break away from a panel or from home etched) to make a jaw. It is insulating, handles a bit of heat for a short time. I would use 3 straight piece of bare FR4 stacked together with the the outer pieces slightly overhang to form a slot to hold the PCB. Add a shim between the stack if you want the PCB to slide more easily. Not as fancy nor pretty as a machined jaws, but it could work.
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