These are various tools I use regularly and can recommend. Whether you are just curious about what I use, or are trying to complete similar projects, here are some tools I can vouch for.
If you purchase from one of the links below, I may get a small proceed, at no extra cost to you. However I only share the tools I enjoy using.
These are the tools I use for prototyping, rework, and sometimes extracting rare chips for use in my own projects.
Many modern electronic systems are sadly designed to keep users out, and employ a variety of “security bits” that people are unlikely to own. This set contains bits for everything I have encountered so far. And the driver itself has a ratchet mechanism, to make disassembly really quick. This set is much nicer than I was expecting, especially considering the low cost.
I bought this when I was struggling to remove a few DIP components with high pin count. With a heat gun, I was unable to heat all the pins at once. Since the components I cared about were through-hole, I wouldn’t have been able to easily bump the components out of their position once they were up to temp.
This let me easily remove the solder from each of the pins of the component. A little bit of work with the heatgun afterwards dealt with the little solder that remained on the other side of the board, and the chips came away easily.
For SMT components with a small number of pins, this works extremely well for extracting components. I have extracted several inline SMT packages using this rework station. Typically after heating one side, it can be lifted away from the board with a small tool underneath the IC. After heating the other side, the component can be freely pulled away from the board.
When desoldering chips with many pins, it is sometimes difficult to heat all the pins at once to free the chip. In these cases, laying a small bed of sand atop a hot plate works quite well in my experience.