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T[_1_]

In article >, says...
> T wrote:
> >
> > Believe it or not, the Rival electric skilets have another use. They're
> > great for re-flowing solder on surface mount PC-Boards.
> >
> > The reason they're great is you have fairly granular control over the
> > temperature and they're cheap.
>
> My Sunbeam was used for desoldering chips from
> surplus circuit boards, back when Dad was teaching
> high school electronics. He'd remove the chips
> from donated circuit boards, then repackage them
> as kits for his students to build. He had a fairly
> large selection of little gadgets the students
> could build from recycled parts. This was back in
> in the 1970's and 1980's when you could still do
> that sort of thing. He even had a set up for
> etching circuit boards for the kits.
>
> Eventually, the rise of the personal computer
> sucked away all of the students that would have
> taken the electronics courses into studying software.
> That, plus the shortage of qualified math teachers,
> killed the electronics program. Dad spent the last
> decade of his career teaching math.
>

There is a very strong electronics hobby community where I live. But the
web electronics distributors have pretty much killed all the local
stores. There are only two left, one is purely tools and electronics,
the other is a robotics place.