did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

[kq702]

I can see an area where atleast one wire is ripped (and the connection is broken). I noted that wire with the red arrow in the pic below. Should I even try to reinstall the board to see if it works, or did I kill it?



Here is another angle. the red dots are the terminals of the capacitor that I reinstalled.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

I am afraid this board is gone...

[kq702]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

Darn, not a good sign when a badcaps veteran says its gone. I have done several boards before and I did not have trouble like I did with this board- it seemed the normal temp I usually use didnt even melt the solder. I tried a new method (putting solder on the desolder iron, and letting the liquid solder do the melting arround the cap legs). It seemed to work on most of the chips, but this one I had it on a little bit too long cus it would not budge.

Is it better to use hot air? or any other sugestions?

[goodpsusearch]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

I can't see the solder pads in the holes. Are they gone from the heat?

[Topcat]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

Even worse sign when the badcaps founder concurs. Looks destroyed to me. I'd try bench testing it before pronouncing it dead, but its not looking good...

[ben7]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

Even worse sign when the badcaps founder concurs. Looks destroyed to me. I'd try bench testing it before pronouncing it dead, but its not looking good...

LOL, you want it to blow up on him?



Anyways, yeah, that looks shot...unless you could jump the broken traces (which is EXTREMELY hard to do!), your board is a goner. Don't worry, I'm sure all of us here have done this at some point...

[kq702]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

Hi again! I only saw a partial pad left on one of the holes :-( But they may just be covered in the black smog I am not sure.

After taking a closer look I noticed multiple wires torn in that area as well :-(

For anyone intrested in seeing better photos- them photos I uploaded in my original post came out so bad and I got so sick of my camera that I decided to go buy a better one tonight so the first test shots were of this board. This camera is much better!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../DSCN0005b.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../DSCN0002b.jpg

I also took a few close ups on my digital scope:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/mds33200/4-1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/mds33200/3-1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/mds33200/1-1.jpg

Tomorrow I will try to plug it in, so lets all hope I do not blow up!

[kq702]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

Oh yeah one more question- is that a bad method that I used does anyone think? (trying to heat the pins by adding hot solder to the bottom of the board right over the pad).

Something else I did several times is get a big glob of solder and hit both of the cap leads, and put the solder iron in the middle. The liquid solder will heat legs of the capacitor and eventually it will slide right out.

Is that a bad method? I it seemed to work for me for a while (untill I ran into this one today).

[tom66]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

I would be surprised if that booted. If those lines carry critical signals, say from the northbridge to the CPU, it's possible it will boot but have memory errors or random lock ups.

[eccerr0r]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

Looks like the tracks near the solder point have been destroyed Might be able to solder some jumpers but usually that doesn't work very well.

What iron are you using to heat the board? Very tempting to use 240W guns to heat those huge ground planes but their tips just are too big, heating way too much...

I tend to add a small bit of solder to desolder, it's not an uncommon method to do it - just need to be able to clear out the holes after the old device has been removed. However don't make a big blob over both pins, especially if there's tracks nearby, you don't want the molten solder over tracks very long as it tends to cause pads and tracks to separate from the board. For 2-pin devices, the "rocking" method works well - heat one pin and pull part out as much as possible but doesn't need to completely come out (try to leave a little of the pin in, if you can't pull it out in one shot). Then go to the other pin and repeat. Keep melting solder on one pin at a time and rocking the device until it's freed. This doesn't work on devices that have more than one set of 2 pins in a row (i.e. 3-pin inline transistors and things with more than 3 pins).

[kq702]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

Thank you for the info. I was going to try to make sure no leads were shorting before I powered it up, so I removed the cap and cleaned the board and after I did that it does not look as bad, but clearley damage is done to 4 wires. Still have not powered it up but I think I am going to attempt to repair the damaged leads. I never did any repairs like that before but I think I will give it a try. Gonna start researching how to do that next! I know its difucult but its worth a try.

[Psycho0124]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

It's certainly do-able!
Trace repairs are tricky but with the right tools and a healthy portion of patience, I bet can get this board up and running again.

1. You'll need some solder wick for fixing the inevitable blobs.
2. Get a lower wattage soldering iron. All that BBQ on the board means you're running WAY too high of a wattage as well as much too large a tip. I use a cheapo $10 45-watt iron from radio shack and it's served me well through dozens of soldering projects over the years. Let it sit for a few minutes while it heats up and you'll be good to go. A lightweight iron helps with precise soldering too!
3. Buy/Grind yourself a nice fine wedge tip (mine is a custom sidewalk grind. hehe). You'll want to be able to apply heat ONLY where it's needed.
4. Get some gel flux. When in doubt, flux the crap out of everything. You can use a flat paint brush with the bristles cut short (to make 'em stiff) dipped in some 99% isopropyl alcohol to clean off the flux residue. Your solder joints will love you. Be sure it's closed tight and stored upright. It likes to ooze through the threads if it's upside-down. Bleh.
5. You'll need something to use as replacement traces. Pull a ground plane or some similar traces off some scrap piece and cut it to fit. Scrape them clean and swipe it with a hot iron to get the gunk off.

Ok, now for the fun part.
First, take your finest pocket knife and start scraping back the varnish over the damaged traces. You'll want shiny exposed copper a half centimeter back from each damaged end. Be gentle or you'll cut/rip the trace! Flux and tin them. Now, get your trace repairs cut and tinned and fluxed. Lay the first end over the end of the trace you're fixing. Just slide the tip of your hot iron over the trace and you should get a good joint.
Remember: Quick on, quick off. Use a crazy hot iron, get the job done, and get the heat off quick!

Now, lay the other end of your repair trace over the other side of the damaged trace and do another sweep with your tip.

(Do a search on youtube for "PCB trace repair" to get and idea of the technique.)

Repeat with the other traces until you're done! If you run into any solder blobs, just flux the tip of your solder wick and lay it over the blob. Touch your iron to the wick until it soaks up the excess solder and gently pull BOTH off at the same time. Don't yank or you'll rip the trace right off the board. Cut off and trash the end of the wick as you go when it gets soaked and re-flux.

I'm a little worried about the solder pads around the caps lead holes, they look pretty nuked. One of those should connect to a ground plane or a trace on that side but I can't make out where. You didn't happen to take a pic of the board before you started did ya?

Even if it doesn't live, trying to resurrect this one will give you the experience to tackle future projects!


This post is being written on an ECS Ka3 MVP board with 12 fresh caps I swapped last night (I've done about 7 of these over the years). I've taken soldering courses at the college level and been tackling soldering projects for about 20 years.

[momaka]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

4. Get some gel flux. When in doubt, flux the crap out of everything.

+11111

A few years ago, I never used flux for anything when soldering (except for whatever was in the solder I had). Now, I will simply refuse to solder if I had to do it without flux. When it comes to soldering, flux really is like a magic liquid.

Flux is what will allow the solder on the tip of your iron to "bond" with the solder on the joint on the board, thus transferring all of the heat to it. Then you can use a much smaller (40-50W, and in some cases even 35W) iron for the job.

Something else I did several times is get a big glob of solder and hit both of the cap leads, and put the solder iron in the middle. The liquid solder will heat legs of the capacitor and eventually it will slide right out.

I've used that method quite a few times before to remove multi-pin connectors on motherboards, and it has worked fine for me. They key is to only heat the solder blob and avoid touching the board with the soldering iron. To ensure this method works effectively, make sure to flux all joints that you want the solder blob to melt. And lastly - you will need a temperature-regulated iron to do the solder blob method properly. An unregulated iron will loose its heat after a few seconds (especially if it's smaller than 50W) and then things start to get ugly.

IMO it's a fine method, but you need the right tools for it. When I had only a 35W iron, I never even thought this method was possible.

[Phaihn]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

i use a adjustable soldering station has a 20w and 40w setting i am going to be getting some new tips for it soon.

its a re branded mastercraft one (Mode) looks just like this one.

http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/brows....jsp?locale=en

[LLLlllou]

Re: did I kill the board? too much heat decapping :-(

I can see an area where atleast one wire is ripped (and the connection is broken). I noted that wire with the red arrow in the pic below. Should I even try to reinstall the board to see if it works, or did I kill it?



Here is another angle. the red dots are the terminals of the capacitor that I reinstalled.

Ho-lee-crap!!! Looks like you used a phaser on kill setting to do the desoldering.

Assuming the vias aren't ripped out, it's possible, but if they are, highly unlikely.