Reflow advice needed :(

Long story short:
I was sleepy, and I was careless. my cat had played with my pause switch wiring a few weeks ago and got one wire off. It was a cold joint anyway. So I had one wire left, and after I woke up I decided <gulp>... to just rip it off. never, EVER do this, folks.

Well now my dipsw 8 won't work (omg big surprise there).

now I tried to reflow, but i usually get a lot of black stuff from the soldering iron (flux??). It is hard to make a solder glob on the PCB.

finally I got a glob about 3.5 mm wide on the pin in question (yeah that's big I know). So I turned on the mvs in test mode.

nope didn't work.

I finally got a smaller glob to go on.

STILL NO PAUSE!!

Anyone know how I can get off the black stuff, and reflow solder over the pin? i have a desoldering braid but it doesn't like to suck up the black stuff.

Thanks in Advance, I will never ever be so stupid again.

I need a unibios now more than ever, lol...

damn that is a predictament.

You're positive that its from the solder and not a little burnt plastic from the PCB?

anyway, here is what i do for tight spots. If you have a variable setting iron, set it on the lowest setting and apply it to the excess solder. then tak an exacto knife and very carfully scrape away the excess. the warm solder should come off easy. You don't want it completely melted or it just smears everywhere.

I've never had much luck with wicks on precision work. I use them mainly for gettting the solder off stuff I take apart, like dead power supplies.

Arakon Kaizen said:

damn that is a predictament.

You're positive that its from the solder and not a little burnt plastic from the PCB?

anyway, here is what i do for tight spots. If you have a variable setting iron, set it on the lowest setting and apply it to the excess solder. then tak an exacto knife and very carfully scrape away the excess. the warm solder should come off easy. You don't want it completely melted or it just smears everywhere.

I've never had much luck with wicks on precision work. I use them mainly for gettting the solder off stuff I take apart, like dead power supplies.

Click to expand...

Nope it's just 30w. No other settings.

And I really don't think it's burnt plastic. I hope not, at least. It is extremely hard to get it in the desoldering braid...

yeah i know it is, thats why i just get the stuff warm and scrape it with an exacto. luckily solder is pretty soft so when its even just a bit warm its semi-pliable.

also may want to scrape down the head of your iron as well. I'm not sure if it helps but I try to keep my solder tip nice and shiny. Might try taking some steel wool to it. (the iron NOT the board!)

Arakon Kaizen said:

yeah i know it is, thats why i just get the stuff warm and scrape it with an exacto. luckily solder is pretty soft so when its even just a bit warm its semi-pliable.

also may want to scrape down the head of your iron as well. I'm not sure if it helps but I try to keep my solder tip nice and shiny. Might try taking some steel wool to it. (the iron NOT the board!)

Click to expand...

I tried the repair with my old iron, but that iron sucks. It had a lot of black gunk on it, so about 2 months ago I scraped it all off with sandpaper. Well that scraped off the finish on it, and it was all copper, so I ruined the head.

So today I got a new iron (hey it was just $7). And i retried it with that. But nope, no luck (I tried with the new one before I posted here).

bump! broken? goose? neogeoman??

I use one of these.....



you push in the plunger, heat up the solder, then push the button on the desolder tool.

the plunger shoots up creating a vacuum, sucking up the solder.

I think it works great, and I paid maybe $10 for it.

Yes the pump will do...

On a side note, you don't need to solder 2 wires to the PCB for a pause switch: one of the 2 pins of each DIP switch is ground so you can take it from a more handy place of the cab or supergun.

so, I wasted $5 on the braid? But the pump will get the mysterious black substance??

I don't care about getting my pause switch back, I just want to have dip 8 work.

I'm not sure what the black stuff is, maybe some one could answer if you got a pic of it.

as for the desolder pump, if what ever you are trying to remove will melt, then the pump will suck it up.

are you sure you didn't rip out the trace entirely?

If so, you might have to fix it.....


Also,
are you using rosin core solder?

norton9478 said:

are you sure you didn't rip out the trace entirely?

If so, you might have to fix it.....


Also,
are you using rosin core solder?

Click to expand...

No I'm not sure either way. It's not a huge deal because I'm getting the uniBIOS once 1.3 comes out.

my solder is 60/40 rosin core.