Answer to my desoldering woes!

[timmeh87]

remember to use flux!

[nevermind1534]

Or take the easy way out; just use a heat gun or propane torch. Have to be careful not to delaminate the PCB, especially with the propane torch.

I used a propane torch to desolder my NES cart slot, and it worked great; a few seconds, and it was off.

[XCVG]

Or take the easy way out; just use a heat gun or propane torch. Have to be careful not to delaminate the PCB, especially with the propane torch.

I used a propane torch to desolder my NES cart slot, and it worked great; a few seconds, and it was off.

My god.

You will copulate up your board doing that.

[nevermind1534]

Or take the easy way out; just use a heat gun or propane torch. Have to be careful not to delaminate the PCB, especially with the propane torch.

I used a propane torch to desolder my NES cart slot, and it worked great; a few seconds, and it was off.

My god.

You will screw up your board doing that.

Haven't yet

If you're very careful, you won't

[timmeh87]

even with a heat gun I've delaminated my boards pretty bad. You can even do it with a hairdryer... wow thats brave man.

[bicostp]

I've pulled parts off junk boards with a lighter before. Obviously it's only something you do with no other options and you don't care about the donor board.

[timmeh87]

Flux is a chemical that removes the oxide layer from the metal so that it can flow properly. Without it your solder will slowly go from liquid to something more like runny putty. It wont flow into copper braid and it will leave little peaks like whipped cream when you take the iron away.

They sell it in pens for like $5. Get something for electronics, stay away form plumbing crap. Your solder hopefully has a flux core, but its not always convenient to add more solder in order to get some flux. (Like while desoldering!)

[desertman123]

even with a heat gun I've delaminated my boards pretty bad. You can even do it with a hairdryer... wow thats brave man.

Heat up the board and slowly turn the heat up as you do it and it should be fine.

[SonyPortableizer]

I use this blue thing from radioshack. You push down on the black tab, then press a button, it pops back up, and sucks away the solder. I used it in my Gameboy Pocket, before I would heat up the solder and pull whatever it was away, it sucked when I tried to do it to my nes

[mikeyg]

I use this blue thing from radioshack. You push down on the black tab, then press a button, it pops back up, and sucks away the solder. I used it in my Gameboy Pocket, before I would heat up the solder and pull whatever it was away, it sucked when I tried to do it to my nes

I had that. Then it broke.

[Zero_D]

I just bought the desoldering iron from the first post as well. Seems like it'll come in handy. Only down side is the cheapest shipping option at checkout was either UPS Ground or FedEx Ground for $10. Why can't they just use USPS?

[desertman123]

I just bought the desoldering iron from the first post as well. Seems like it'll come in handy. Only down side is the cheapest shipping option at checkout was either UPS Ground or FedEx Ground for $10. Why can't they just use USPS?

Because, that would be too easy. No body wants to give you an easy time ordering something.

[Zero_D]

Because, that would be too easy. No body wants to give you an easy time ordering something.

So true lol. Anyway, I received the desoldering iron today and it works great! I used it to remove an expansion/nunchuck port from a wiimote that was giving me some issues, and it came off so easy with this. I then soldered on a new port in the old one's place and now my wiimote works fine