I would need a little bit of help and advice in choosing the right temperature and airflow for microsoldering with a hot air station. I could not find any similar topic on the forum. I have about 15 years of experience in soldering/desoldering with classical soldering stations with soldering irons and I also know when which tip and temperature is the best to use, but I almost never used a hot air station until now, so that’s why I am asking for advice.
I purchased a few months ago a Quick 861DW hot air rework station and I already used it for many hours to desolder components from dead circuit boards (to get used to it), but I would like to know what temperatures would be recommended when soldering and desoldering small and medium size SMD components and what airflow would be the best to use, to not blow away the smaller components from the board. I also don’t want to destroy the components with too high temperatures, that’s why I prefer lower temperatures, but then I have to apply the hot air for a longer period of time, what also is not the best thing to do. I am mainly interested in the recommended temperature/airflow for (de)soldering small passive components like 0805 or 1206 resistors/capacitors, and for (de)soldering smaller SOIC and QFP ICs. I am not interested yet in working with BGAs.
Furthermore I would like to know if you apply the hot air directly just to the specific area where you want to (de)solder some components, or if you try beforehand to preheat the whole board a little bit with the hot air station, to prevent mechanical stress in the board due to the large temperature difference between the hot and the cold areas of the board? I don’t own a board preheater yet but I also don’t plan to buy one. Thank you in advance for the help and for the recommendations!