As anybody who has tried to work on through-plated PCB's either repairing/modfying or building equipment will attest. De-Soldering components on a through-plated PCB is a royal pain with standard soldering equipment. RoHS compliant Lead-free solder (which can have both a higher melting point and higher viscosity when molten) just adds to the problem. Traditional wick or pneumatic based handeld pump based desoldering techniques tend to either result in lots of frustration or damaged components/PCB's. Lift a pad on a multilayer PCB and you have just created yourself a reasonable amount of work beyond the original repair.

There is a solution which is a purpose built reflow tool. If you haven't seen or used one before they are a revelation. Essentially you have a straw like hollow soldering bit which you place over the component leg on the joint. Press a trigger and a vacuum pump sucks the molten solder into a capture vessel. With a tiny bit of practice components will literally be falling into your hand.

Unfortunately these solutions tended to be expensive enough that they are out of reach of anything but a very dedicated hobbyist or professional Engineer.

However the Duratool Station is eminently affordable and seems to perform very well.

Read below for my full review

Here are some basic soldering tips for beginners struggling to get good clean joints reliably. I have been asked to help a few times with people starting out, usually one of the below points is reason for their pain

Soldering is like many things. Once you have a bit of practice the technique becomes second nature and you'll wonder why it seemed so hard to begin with. Usually there is some initial frustration where it seems you can't get a clean joint no matter what you try. Again this is usually down to one of the points below.