(this is a resend to the list, the first was bounced by QTH.net because their 
postmaster has some brain-dead SMTP spam checking misconfiguration which 
produces false positives (for the subject line "Circuit Specialists 701 rework 
station:. Grrrrr.)

About a week ago, Tom Hammond pointed out that Circuit Specialists had some 
soldering stations which looked like Hakko 936's ( 
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/7307 ) for a good price. I 
noticed that they had a through hole rework station ( 
http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/7789 ) which also looked very 
similar to a Hakko offering. There has been some conjecture that these are the 
same as the Hakko units, but are being sold by an OEM to Hakko for considerably 
less.

Since my 20 year old Pace desoldering station recently died, I thought I'd try 
out one of these, especially since the $200 price was by far better than 
anything else available. This is about 20% of what a similar Hakko unit runs.

I receive my station today, and can report that these are very obviously NOT 
the same as real Hakko products. They're Chinese clones. As mentioned earlier, 
these are made by Aoyue ( http://www.aoyue.com/english/index.htm ). From the 
looks of this unit, I doubt Aoyue OEMs anything to Hakko - some things are 
close, others are functional, but none are of the same quality.

The desoldering handpiece is of decent quality. It appears that it will take 
Hakko spares, including heaters and tips. It could definitely use a better tip 
- this one is chrome (?) plated and won't "tin." The soldering pencil has a 
rubber grip instead of the heat insulating foam a real Hakko has, but is 
overall of decent quality. Both use multipin "microphone" style circular 
connectors, which is different than what Hakko uses.

The station itself is workable, the electronics seem to do what they're 
supposed to (they regulate tip temperature and have an LED which lights when 
power is applied to the tip, so it blinks when the tip is at the set temp). The 
controls (switches and pots) are pretty cheap, I'll probably upgrade these. 
They silk screened "Circuit Specialists" on the front, but didn't bother with a 
Fahrenheit temperature scale. The manufacturer took time to grind the markings 
off the ICs on the circuit board (they copied Hakko, but don't want to be 
copied themselves, I guess), and no schematic is provided in the manual.

The biggest obvious difference is that it uses a completely different vacuum 
pump than a real Hakko - meaning no ready source of spare parts. The pump  
actually works better than that on my old Pace. One strange thing though, is 
that the instruction manual (in pretty good Engrish [ http://www.engrish.com/ 
]) clearly shows how to disassemble and clean a Hakko pump. The actual pump is 
completely different than that illustrated in the manual.

All things considered, it works well. Time will tell how this unit holds up, 
but it seems to be a good deal. A couple of better quality switches and pots, 
some real Hakko desoldering tips, and a bit of time should take care of the 
minor issues. 

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