 For today's episode, I am going to do something on a tool that I get often requested to do a deeper coverage on. And for your money, this tool is one of the best, you know, that you can find out there. Talking, of course, about the HACCO FR301 de-soldering tool. I've done an episode before just talking some about this and I did have an issue in the past where I dropped mine and broke this blue shell. And I was able to contact HACCO's service department and order another one of these and get this replaced. So you can find almost every portion of this tool if something breaks or doesn't work anymore, you can replace that. And I have used my personal FR301, this one for, oh goodness, like four years now. And this, I do have a secondary backup one, but I've not even taken it out of the official box yet because this one is still working good for me. Now I have done a job with it recently, so I have not cleaned it yet. And in today's episode, that's what we're gonna focus on is actually cleaning this little tool. Kind of a quick clean, but a clean that you need to do between every job that you're gonna do on a circuit board repair. So let's get into this. And first off, we'll take a look at some of the obvious parts here that we're gonna wanna service. We're not gonna start by service in the barrel here. We're gonna start by service in this back area. Now I told you before when I started that I had broken this piece right here. And that's basically because this tool, although it's extremely handy and wonderful, since that vacuum pump is in this handle area, it really makes it unbalanced as far as holding the tool. And then you might set it down and it's easy to accidentally knock off. This end right here also stays extremely hot, just like a soldering iron. And so for that reason, those two reasons, basically to avoid you dropping this and to give you a safe balance place to store this when you're using it, one of the first things that I recommend is getting this lovely HACCO 633 base that lets you stick this tool in it and you can leave it turned on, but it sits in there nicely on your workstation workbench and it holds it in place so that you can set it down and do a little work on the board and then come back and pull it out and it's ready to use again. This is all resistant to the heat and setup so that this doesn't get hot. And then generally the package comes with a 599B, which you can use to clean the tip of your soldering tool, your desoldering tool, just like you would a soldering iron tip. So I recommend getting this and look, if you need a link to these tools, I will put affiliate links down there in the description notes for this episode. All right, let's get ready to take this thing apart and clean it out. We're gonna start with our chamber right here and this is our solder sucking chamber where it catches all the solder debris from the hot end down here when you suck it in, it goes and it's catching it in this chamber. So periodically you should clean this out as you're going if you're doing multiple desolderings, but what I've got in here is the last job is still in there, you can see it down in there. There's a blob of solder down there so I'll try to pull that out and you can see this chamber has seen a lot of projects. It's very dirty. You don't have to worry about it being spotless. Sometimes I will come in here and take the screwdriver that came with the set and just make sure that I knock off all the tiny debris in there and that way it's the majority of it's clean. It doesn't have to be see through like it is when you originally get it. The same thing with this front end of the chamber, just make sure you knock off all the debris on there as far as solder, tiny particles is not a big problem, but any kind of big particles occasionally can get stuck on this rubber right here. So that's the majority of things you need to do for this chamber. The back end of the chamber is where all the good stuff happens. So as you're sucking in that solder is first caught in this little dish right here and this is a metal dish. So yeah, this is a solder blob of, we're at a desoldered a lot of capacitors and components on a prior job and that's what you're left with. This builds up in this tray and as you can see it gets to a point where if it fills up kind of like where it was when I finished with the last job, it needs to be periodically cleaned out. So you could pull this out as you're, you can remove this chamber as you are working and quickly dump it out, clean it out and continue on with working. Cause what happens is that will build up and then trace elements and smaller elements will fit around the outside of that dish and pass through these four holes on the backside and ultimately hit this, which is your little filter. It's like a filter that's fibrous but you can actually see the one layer right there. I just peeled it off where you get all that gray build up and that's like the last line of filtering before it goes into the air pump. So this is the most common thing that you need to change and check out after every job. Now, sometimes you can do what I just did and get away with peeling a layer off. If you have a thick original OEM filter like this, but a lot of times you get these secondary aftermarket filters and it's better to just install a new one, which I'm gonna do here for this next job, especially if it's something important you're working on. So you just slip that new filter in there if you've got that cheaper version cause to see how thin this is. Sometimes there'll be like twice this thick to start with and then you could peel a layer off because it's still thicker than this aftermarket filter. But for the most part, that's how you clean this chamber. Just make sure this filter's clean on this end, at least the end that's on the inside and the outside pretty much. You wanna make sure that you have both ends clean there cause that's where the air gets sucked through. And then you also want this dish cleaned and this chamber cleaned. And then you can move on to really the more important and complicated part of cleaning these and that's this back chamber. And this is again something you should do in between just about every single job. And you start by twisting this little knob on the back, which actually has a screw on the inside. You twist it to the left so you can loosen that screw and slide this yellow piece off and be careful cause that screw will fall out. We'll set that to the side. Now this is a replaced tube. I have replaced this before and again you can get all these parts from HACCO directly if you need them for replacement parts. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna remove that end of the tube and we're gonna remove this end of the tube. And then we have our little rubber piece here that goes in between so it doesn't pinch the tubes when we install it back like that. So just keep these things together. Make sure this tube is relatively clean. Again it doesn't have to be spotless but you wanna make sure there's no like solder at all or primarily flux. What you're looking for in this area is make sure nothing's sticky from like flux build up or anything. So this part is normally clean and doesn't really need much maintenance besides just checking it. The next portion we're gonna go through is one of the ones that's really key to this whole thing. And that's this next little filter where our tubes go into and there's a little pass through valve, plastic, flap diaphragm under this that we need to really get in and clean. I wanna make sure I press this button down so this is out of the way because I'll need to get in here with the Phillips head screwdriver and unscrew these tiny Phillips head screws on this center piece of the valve. Do you see? I'm not getting those four on the outside. I'm getting the two on the inside. And once they're loose and I can lift that out, you see, kind of turn it upside down if I want to. And this is that diaphragm that I was talking about. This thing often needs to be cleaned because it will get sticky and we'll have residue build up on it. And over time it will turn yellow. So the best thing to do here is just use isopropyl alcohol. And what I like to do is just to get some of that on a paper towel. I've got my little diaphragm there on the paper towel and then I'll just coat it in some of that isopropyl and just make sure to coat the entire thing and rub it around on the towel. Just to make sure that there's no flux residue because what can happen is if you ignore this and don't clean this, your suction power will greatly decrease as you use this tool. And to be honest, you want that suction to be as good as possible every time you use the tool, especially when you're working on these older circuit boards because this end can get extremely hot and can damage a board very quickly, especially if your tool isn't cleaned and sucking the solder in properly. And the next thing I'll do is I'll also clean the area underneath back on the tool itself with the alcohol, clean all in there. Make sure that's good and cleaned out down in those crevices. And then finally, I'll also do that on this portion and we'll just get in there and clean all that out. And then we'll give it a second or two to kind of evaporate to speed things up a little bit. I'm gonna use my handy blower here and we'll get that taken care of. For the most part, now we've cleaned and serviced this entire back end. Under this layer, there is another diaphragm that connects directly to the pump arm. That's the vacuum pump. So if you have additional problems, you may have to get in there and there's a circular diaphragm that you could check out. Eventually I'll do an episode where we get into that section and this inside of this arm handle and do some more work when that is needed, but right now that's not needed. So I'm not gonna jump into that. All right, let's reassemble stuff and make sure we do that right. You'll notice the little diaphragm has a cutout on it that fits like that, specifically on the back there, just like that. So it can only go in that one way. And then this portion that goes on top sits directly on top of there and it's got tabs also. So it's got a little piece right here that has to go down in that piece. So you can just flip that upside down and it'll sit in there on top just like that. And then you wanna sit your screws back in there, just tighten that down a little bit. And the hardest part of doing all this is having fat fingers that you have to try to stick down in these little spots. I always have trouble getting my hands down in these little places. Here we go. We wanna do it just a little bit tight, not overly tightened because that will crack the plastic. Finally, we're gonna reinstall our tube in the back. So just slip it all the way against this part. Don't forget your piece for the middle of the tube right there. And then we're gonna slip that on the back end here. Just make sure that that's good and pushed in. And again, you don't want your lines to pinch. So make sure that that sits back there like that. We've got that properly reinstalled. And then we'll slide this back on here. And then we'll do that. We're gonna reinstall our filter that needs to go with the front going to the front. Then we'll get it locked in place. And now we are ready to run a test on the vacuum chamber just to make sure it's working after that servicing. And we're gonna give it a vacuum test just real quickly. You just hit the vacuum button with it powered on. And that's the normal sound it will make as it's properly working. Now another thing you'll notice if you have good hearing, you may hear a suction noise from this end. Now don't get this anywhere close to you because it is very hot. We'll go over the temperatures here in a second. But this end should make a sound where it's almost like a hissing sound. We can hear air being sucked in through the entire pump. That means it's fully cleaned and working. When I'm working on most circuit boards, I'm running down here at the number one setting at about 660 degrees Fahrenheit. I have turned it up higher to clear it. Sometimes if it gets clogged up in that chamber, you could turn the heat up while you're not actually using it to use on a circuit board. You could use it to clean itself that way, but just remember to always turn this down around a one and low setting when you're getting started, especially on the circuit boards we tend to work on. All right, so if this portion of the tip right here gets clogged up, you can use this little tool that comes with the set. And you can use that to clean out this tip. But this tip sometimes is not your issue. If you have another issue, you may wanna use this. This also comes with your kit, this handle portion, which can grab these tips and barrels while it's hot. And then you'll see the inside barrel of the heating element and tube where it ultimately gets sucked into. This is a larger hole, and then it goes straight in the back here and into the suction chamber and into the solder chambers. Sometimes you do have to come in and take this other screwdriver that you get, and that's safe to stick down in there a little bit and just try to scrape the solder off the sides of the barrel there inside there. You can see where some of it's getting stuck to the side of the screwdriver. And then as your screwdriver cools down, you can knock that off of it. But that's a good thing to do is periodically get in there and clean that and make sure there's nothing in there. You can really hear the suction, everything going on in that. Now, if you have further issues down in here with this tube, you can get down in here and clean this portion. Again, you don't wanna touch any of this with your hands, but this little end right here can get clogged down in that end, and you can use this tool to try to clear it out, unclog it a little bit, and stick it down in there. See, you could use this littler piece to help clear that out a little bit. So once you have that cleaned out, and you know it's for sure clean, stick that back inside the barrel piece right there, then you can just click this inside here, line those pieces up, and your barrel is ready to go. You just need to let it reheat up a little bit, and we're ready to run another test, and that will be an official test to see if this tool is actually gonna be working good. So to do that, I have a circuit board for a PVM that I'm working on right here, and I'll let the tool sit there and make sure it's nice and hot. This is a dynamic convergence and focus board for a Sony PVM2530, and this is just a secondary deflection board to that board. It's not even the primary deflection board, but it's one that you wanna recap. Now I have already removed a couple capacitors at a different time, but today we're gonna remove a couple of more, and we're gonna try to pick some good ones here, hopefully that we can also test and see what the condition is of them after removing them. So when I use this tool, again, just trying to make sure it's hot enough that it will quickly heat up the solder on these legs of the component. So I'm gonna just try to touch only the leg of the component, give it a little wiggle, and that way that leg will break free from the old solder and I could suck up that solder as it heats up. And I'm trying not to directly touch the board. As that heats up the legs, it will heat up that solder and then you can suck the solder out. So that's what we've done here. We've got a 25 volt, 47 UF-ELNA capacitor. That's 85 degree rated that we've removed there. And when we look at it from this side, everything looks okay. And then back on this side, same thing we've managed to clearly get that out without damaging circuit board pad. You will notice some brown there that's actually leftover flux on this board. You see it down here and over near these other portions. That's leftover from Sony in the factory when they originally produced this board that was poured all over it. And then it would have been used to solder in all these pieces. And then it was mostly cleaned off but there is some leftover residue. So that's what we've heated up and that's why it looks brown and nasty on that portion. Just some isopropyl alcohol, we'll clean that off. So there's one out. Let's try and remove another one and see how it goes. Make sure that we have consistency here with our desoldering tool. I'm gonna pick out one of these capacitors right under it and see if we can't get it out. Okay, this one's coming out even better than the first one. All right, that one came out real nice and easy. Right there, smaller capacitor. And this one is a 50 volt, 4.7 microfarad capacitor. These are Elna caps too, which people are always complaining about being really bad. So let's take our two capacitors that we've removed and we're gonna test them in this handy dandy little tester here. And just stick them in this connection point, lock that in, press our test button and see what the condition of these capacitors that we've pulled are. Okay, so this one has a pretty high ESR at 2.1 ohms. 4134 nanofarads. So that's 4.1 and it's a 4.7 cap, probably not a problematic cap at this point, but this monitor is gonna be in a lot of use and this is all preventative to make sure that it can stay in use a long time. There's no telling what would happen if you actually use this monitor more than 1,000 hours, how these caps might react. Let's see what this other one looks like. It's a bigger cap and we'll see how it pulls up on our tester, this one's taking a bit longer. There we go. Our ESR is 85 ohms and hey, we're at 45.68 microfarads and that's a 47 microfarad capacitor. So that's still, you know, reading good. All right, everybody, there you have it. Quick and dirty tutorial on how to clean your FR-301. Again, I recommend that you do that cleaning that we did today on every single job that you do. So if you have a job where you're doing a couple of capacitors, you can either finish the job and clean it afterwards or wait till the next job comes up and clean it before you do that job. But that way the tool will last long. And again, mine has been in use for four years and still works great. It's just sometimes you do have to go in every once a while and do some more cleaning on the internal parts that we didn't show today. So I'll follow this up with a episode on that. Again, if you do need any of these items, I'll put links to those in the notes in the description of this video. Thanks again for watching, everybody. I'll see you next time with some more retro content.