At a recent SGVTech meetup, newcomer Amir had lots to offer. One item that I picked up on was his assertion that a cheap Harbor Freight heat gun can be a low-cost alternative to fancy electronics hot air rework stations. I have one of those cheap hot air guns in my garage! Designed for home improvement projects like paint stripping, it is a big crude tool. I wouldn't use it to assemble surface mount devices or anything I actually care about until I get a better idea of what I am doing. I'll learn to handle it by disassembling parts that are either robust, or that I don't care about.

The very next week, I got the chance to put that idea to the test when [Emily] and I felt inspired to try lighting up a CRT. The original driving electronics are no longer functional due to us crudely tearing them out of the TV, but the tube and a few associated accessories are still intact. To help us play with the tube, we thought it might be a good idea to remove a CRT socket to make it easier to access our tube's pins. This is the ideal situation for testing the heat gun - a big socket should be robust enough to take the heat of a clumsily applied hot air gun much better than something delicate. This TV is also old enough to predate ROHS and lead-free solder, so we expect the solder to flow relatively easily.

I aimed the hot air gun at the solder joints at low setting. After a minute of inactivity, I turned it up to high. About a minute after that, we could see solder starting to melt. A few more seconds after that, all solder on the socket melted enough for us to remove it.

CRT socket removed from PCB

This was much faster and easier than individually undoing solder joints using a soldering iron and a solder removal tool. And the mission was successful: our newly freed socket made it easier to probe terminals and to make experimental connections with alligator clips.

CRT pin probing with socket