Desoldering larger areas

I need to desolder 6 potentiometers. now these have 5 contacts, the 3 usual pins wich are small, but also 2 larger pins , i think these only serve to mountain the potentiometers on the PCB board?

I have this small desolder pump and it works fine on the smaller pins but it's difficult to get all the solder of the 2 larger pins. I can desolder the largest part but there's still solder under the bowed pins and it's difficult to get this fluent.

Does anybody have some tips, maybee changing the head of the soldering iron, special tools etc...?

solder braid...

that would be the easiest solution to those areas

re-apply some solder to those areas... then use the wick instead

i'm sure those large holes are also part of the ground plane too.. that's heatsinking the heat from your iron and causing the outermost part of the solder bubble to be too cold to suck out. the only thing that's helped me is getting a higher wattage iron with a larger tip for those areas. if your iron won't supply enough total wattage, your board will continue to heatsink that heat away and you'll never get it out!

sometimes you can get the solder out of the smaller pins and then lightly twist the part back and forth while heating.. that will weaken the solder enough to pull it out.

Try solder flux to get it flowing better.

Or get your friend to bring by his soldering iron and you can use both to heat up each leg and pull the part out all at once.

I asked my parents to give a helping hand. I almost trashed the PCB

A PCB holder would be great too :grin:

yea, get a set of soldering clamps... radio shack has some small ones that work fine for most things... though with larger boards you might have to look to something else.