They are called de soldering tweezers. Weller makes a good unit as well as a few others.
FWIW when SMD are installed they do not use solder baths. They use a paste type solder in a hypodermic needle dispenser. Kind of works like glue. Place the board in a infrared oven to set the solder paste.
Great thing about SMD is no inductive wires adding impedance where it does not belong. Wires are the enemy of of circuits.
I use a large tip that will heat both sides of the capacitor at once. I'll add enough solder to float the capacitor to one side, then pull the capacitor off the board. Finally I'll use Solder-Wik to remove the excess solder.
Zak W1VT
What's your preferred method for replacement?
I use a low temperature solder paste sold in a barrel syringe with plunger. Use a fine needle such as an insulin pen syringe needle for the solder paste syringe barrel 'Luer Lok' tip. Insulin syringe needles provide fine dispensing but may be a problem to purchase if you are not diabetic. In North Carolina fine gauge needles for use with insulin syringes are sold in CVS pharmacies without a prescription. You simply walk up to the display. Pick up a box and pay the cashier at the front of the store. Alternatively you can buy blunt tip needles for the solder paste tubes from many online suppliers of surface mount tools. While the blunt tips are not designed to puncture skin they can still easily break the surface and cause a nasty wound. Be very careful as it can be embarrassing explaining how solder paste came to be located under your skin. The clean out is not pleasant.
I select #30 and #31 gauge blunt or sharp needles for dispensing paste on fine pitch pads. Pads with spacing greater than 50 mils and 50 mils width I use #28 gauge needles. Ideally a compressed air dispenser is used for paste application. But for just two or three pads, patience and persistence are sufficient.
Melting the solder as close as possible to a production floor technique using hot air is done with a hot air gun. While some use the cheap guns from Harbor Freight etc, I use a Weller Gun which has multiple tips that allows tightly focused low velocity air to heat small spots such as found with 0603 or smaller parts. It also has tips for larger areas. You remove the source of heat when you see the solder paste flow, the part does a quick wiggle and aligns itself on the pad.
While I have in the past used a soldering iron and solder wire to attach capacitor and resistor SMD's I avoid that today. If you read the approved attachment methods provided by the part manufacturers, in many cases they only warranty the parts if you use their approved attachment methods. This is particularly true when attaching high value IC's and transistors with extended temperature ranges and specified for use in high reliability environments.
Be forewarned if the part you are attaching is a part that shipped in a hermetically sealed bag then there is a time limit of 24 to 48 hours nominal to place the part on the board and reflow attach it after breaking the seal on the shipping package. Any hand soldering operation is usually verboten as the temperature contour for the part during attachment is tightly defined and must be uniform to maintain the warranty.
While some may have excellent vision which allows attachment of SMD devices without vision assisting devices, as you grow older that gift usually fades into the sunset. I now use a Bausch & Lomb Stereo Zoom Microscope for new work and rework. Especially when performing post attachment inspection of the work and surrounding area it really is a necessity. If the part is thermally stressed beyond spec, micro fractures can develop on the part terminations such as found on caps and resistors. Without sufficient magnification they will be overlooked.
When attaching surface mount power transistors read up on the approved attachment techniques. It is not unusual for ceramic packages to separate around the area were the lead enters the ceramic body when moisture in the air that seeped in around the lead expands during soldering. The moisture expansion will push the package apart if excessive temperature is used or heat is applied to long or heat is applied non-uniformly. Verify the manufacturer's attachment procedures.
Regards
Chuck