Soldering to traces

[Spyder12587]

Being new to the whole soldering/modding arena, I was wondering how exactly this is done. On my portable, some of the contact rings came off the board when I removed the controller ports and I was advised to "wire to the traces".

Also, I was planning on hacking up a spare SNES controller I had lying around for my portable and believe I read that I would need to wire to the traces here as well. I fear that the controller may be the worst part of the system to wire... It just seems daunting to me for some reason. Thanks for any help you can give!

[bicostp]

Just scrape some of the insulating coating off the trace you want to solder to, and solder to it as though it was a regular solder pad. (Just solder the wire parallel to the board, so you can tape it down to minimize the risk of damaging the relatively fragile connection.)

Solder won't stick to the coating, so as long as you only scrape off the target trace there's little to no risk of shorting (wven on small traces close together).

[Spyder12587]

Awesome. So if I cut the SNES controller board into three pieces (five counting the shoulders, which just need to be extended) I can just wire the traces together and it should work?

[eurddrue]

Yes, but you have to sand off the green layer because the solder won't stick you it. just sand a tiny spot over where the trace is and solder to the copper trace underneath.

[Spyder12587]

That's what I wanted to know. Much appreciated!

[timmeh87]

If you put it on the end of a broken trace, or on a really thin trace, you will be able to tear the entire trace off the board pretty easily. This makes most people unhappy.

So you want to make sure that the wire is securely taped, glued, etc, to the PCB about an inch from the wire/trace connection.