Hi kawa, I am unaware of edsyn's large line-up of products, so you can answer this better, do they have a version of their desoldering tool, where the tip is heated by a heating element, like the cheap Chinese variant I bought some time back. A "Desoldering iron". I am quite happy with mine, however as you would expect, the local tool doesn't hold as much vacuum or last as long as an Edsyn product would.
The construction is quite simple, instead of a plastic tip like the one on a soldapullt, they have a metallic tip, which is connected to a ceramic heating element which is then wired to a power outlet. The fact that you need only one tool as opposed to using a soldering iron and desoldering tool, makes the job quicker and you have to worry less about timing it correctly.
The logical problem with such a tool would be the susceptibility to heat, now with the fluorinated o-ring and grease, the problem is reduced.
If Edsyn don't have such a product, have they considered one, as I believe we need a product between the soldapullt and the Hakko 808, something intermediate.
Edit: Something like this: http://www.vetco.net/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=6841
where does the power pumped into this tip go when it's not melting solder? it goes into the plastic, which in a soldapullt is high quality ptfe, abs, and other materials, all of which will eventually melt. the cheap chinese variant is not made to last. a soldapullt willl last forever because it was designed properly. the fluorination protects the plastic and sealing bits from hot air and molten bits of solder, all of which should be < 300C. a soldering iron with a soldapullt around it would quickly reach 450C without huge amounts of insulation that cost far more than the soldapullt itself.
put another way, your cheap chinese clone was built to low tolerances to cause itself to melt after a fairly small number of cycles. before it melts, it will warp, because every single time you use it, all the plastic bits are hitting glass transition. thankfully, they probably didn't use real ptfe anywhere in your clone, because that would, in addition, outgas aerosolized formaldehyde, which is ridiculously toxic. there are other cheap plastics that will outgas formaldehyde, and additives to abs that will also outgas toxic fumes when heated to those temperatures.
the edsyn equivalent to what you're talking about is a properly engineered and built desoldering station like the zd500. the edsyn stations are pretty cool, actually. there are a lot of small touches that make them very very nice. solder recovery _in_ the holder, for example, and all have fully sheathed ceramic heaters. it's a small tradeoff of efficiency for safety. they're really hobbled right now by older electronics and a very blocky design. they're very function over form compared to the hakko industrial design (well, except for the 808. that thing just looks unavoidably like a huge vacuum pump on the end of a nozzle.
ANYWAY, the bottom line is that the soldapullt pushes the limits of what you can do with plastic at that price point. high vacuum means high precision molding, a high enough spring constant that it's possible to pump by hand but not so weak that you don't get high enough air velocity, etc. the only weakness that the soldapullt has is that it uses what i believe is a pretty volatile grease. however, i know the reasoning for this. the feeling at edsyn engineering is that they can get their rubber o-rings at a very low price, the grease is just viscous enough to seal but not too viscous to cause drag, and just inert enough to last for a damned long time. it's "good enough" vs balls out geekhacking. that said, let it not be said that they don't spend money where it needs to be spent. the tips are high temp resistance teflon, AND replaceable with tolerances that are tight enough that they do not leak but are still removable. the reason why they can do this is because they mold everything in house to higher tolerances than any molding shop overseas that i know of, and they QC everything before it goes out. _everything_. the cl1481s we are discussing as learn to solder irons are individually temperature calibrated before they leave the factory, and still manage to hit a lower price point than anything hakko or weller can deliver.
wow, total digression. i would like to point out two things though. the first thing is that the krytoxapullt is bigger, and metal and could theoretically carry a heater on it, but it also took me something like an hour to break the plunger on it, and that was AFTER putting a whole bunch of effort into getting the plunger to actually produce any form of vacuum. there were so many leaks in that thing it was seriously insane. the plunger i replaced it with is something like a 1" diameter x 1/2" straight up BLOCK of ptfe, machined for two fluorinated o-rings. only after doing that, and sealing the entire unit with rtv silicone that cost like 3x the krytoxapullt itself (the ptfe plunger and o-rings cost about as much as the icing dispenser did, so i got away cheap on that part of it) was i able to actually produce enough vacuum to suck in nlgi 2 grease.
sooo basically what i'm saying is that edsyn could not maintain their level of quality and produce a soldapullt with a heater core. to properly engineer such a thing is a major undertaking, and they already produce a range of extremely nice inexpensive irons as well as a range of extremely nice expensive solder/desolder stations for production level quality, all of which can easily be paired with their line of soldapullts. there's really no reason for them to produce a poorly engineered soldapullt variant with a heater in it that will slowly melt itself into pieces and produce toxic fumes in the process.
