Interesting, that thought did cross my mind, I think I will adopt your method if I am doing all caps on a board, where I don't know for sure the cap has lost seal and leaked all its electrolytes. It seems like the good ones are going to be the candidates for explosion but the dead leaky ones not so much. I also considered that it was inside the hot air tool nozzle and it it was going to pop it would be reasonable contained. I agree though I didn't like the idea much.You've been lucky. I really, REALLY don't like to see people removing electrolytic caps with hot air (YouTubers seem to love this method) - they do explode, quite violently. YMMV, clearly. FWIW, I prefer the perpendicular can-cutting method - I've never had a damaged track or anything adverse after doing that many hundreds of times.my hot air tool had a nozzle on it that was wider than the diameter of the caps. I found that lowering the tool over the cap and gently tapping the cap with the nozzle until it was free to move out of place worked really well.
I will try the can-cutting method next time. Initially I tried the repeated heat a leg and tilt, but manged to rip a pad up doing that.
Statistics: Posted by awilliams — Sun Feb 16, 2025 10:38 pm
