This calls for an OMG! then a w00t!

[JDXNC]

I nearly crapped myself this morning. When I sat down at my main rig it was frozen, really strange I think to myself, as its never frozen before, other than for my own fault... pushing it the OC too high. So I shut it down, repower it up and then I get nothing on the screen, no beep codes, nadda, only hard drives and fans running. Last night I was trying to use a USB HDD and it wouldn't work, all but two of my USB ports were dead. No big deal I thought, buy a pci USB card and its all fixed, well this morning the entire mobo was dead. But before I knew that I went through the usual swapping out parts to see for sure it wasn't something else. Well when it came time to pull out my FX5900... mighty large card it is, and in a smallish case with water cooling it can be a bit tricky to remove and my heard nearly stopped when I knocked off a tiny chip near the corner of the card. But I calmed myself down and thought, I've souldered tough things before.... lets up the ante a little(or a lot and try this out for size, no pun intended :p).

http://jdxnc.com/pics/5900.jpg

Its definately not pretty, but it WORKS! And the hard part was one of the little legs on the chip broke off so I blobbed a bit of soulder next to it and it held. Also its hard to tell but theres 3 legs on the left side of the chip. Took me about 2 hours and about 20 tries, but I got it and it worked perfectly in another system :D

Krag, I'm sure you can appreciate all how difficult this was!

[ThePCGuy]

Nice work. It's situations like that that I wish I had a hot-air rework station and the knowledge to use it :).

- Jim

[SolidxSnake]

Wow, that's a very small chip.

Soldering things like that, don't use the roll of solder. Tin your tip, the legs, and the pad on the board, and then leave a little blob of solder on the tip of your iron. Press it down, and let it sit. Shouldn't be too hard.

But damn, that is SMALL.

good method of making an artificial leg.

[JDXNC]

Soldering things like that, don't use the roll of solder. Tin your tip, the legs, and the pad on the board, and then leave a little blob of solder on the tip of your iron. Press it down, and let it sit. Shouldn't be too hard.


Thats what I did, but again, with it being so small, even the most simple task is hard, actually holding the chip in place to solder it was 90% of the problem, I solved this but putting a tiny dab of Arctic Silver Ceramique on the back of the chip and sitting it in place, otherwise it kept sticking to my iron when I tried to solder it, or I would bump it out of place. My fingers are too big to hold it and solder it at the same time.... I'll tell you right now, you don't even need to touch the iron to burn skin :p

[SolidxSnake]

Thats what I did, but again, with it being so small, even the most simple task is hard, actually holding the chip in place to solder it was 90% of the problem, I solved this but putting a tiny dab of Arctic Silver Ceramique on the back of the chip and sitting it in place, otherwise it kept sticking to my iron when I tried to solder it, or I would bump it out of place. My fingers are too big to hold it and solder it at the same time.... I'll tell you right now, you don't even need to touch the iron to burn skin :p


Yeah, i've learned that the hard way too.

i never figured out the "right" way to hold down those tiny SMD parts. ceramique sounds like a good idea, actually.

[Goateh]

Nicely done, I get all jittery when I have to solder small ICs. No really, nicely done.. i'd probably end up causing heat dmg to the damn thing or burning myself a bit :S

[krag]

NICE JOB JD! DAAAaaaaang bro...yer a STUD! :clap: :clap:

Nice skillz bro, yeah the trick to small parts soldering is getting the little buggers stationary. Once you have that accomplished then its all down hill from there. You did a really nice job on that card! :attn: :thup:

[beavismorpheus]

Do you hold any seminars or sell instructional videos? Any advice for a soldering newb? Any links, tips atleast?

[JDXNC]

Do you hold any seminars or sell instructional videos? Any advice for a soldering newb? Any links, tips atleast?

Nah, I couldn't do that, any videos would have to have an R rating due to an excess of profanity :p

I just learned to solder on my own, best thing to do would be to get yourself a decent iron and some old hardware to practice on. Thats howI did it, trained myself on changing caps on dead motherboards.

[Flip-Mode]

Nice job, reminds of the time I decided to change my cell phone leds to blue. They ware like 1-2mm leds and you couldn't see the solder points with the naked eye.
Nice job.

[HeatM1ser2k4]

As someone who has modded various motherboards, I can certainly appreciate the patience and steady hand it took to complete this.That plastic burns and melts quickly,too! Excellent job working with such small components that could've very easily been destroyed just by accidentally soldering two legs together.Sure, it may not be pretty---but you just saved your own ass---how pretty can that really be anyway?

LOL...nice work!

Do you hold any seminars or sell instructional videos? Any advice for a soldering newb? Any links, tips atleast?
Here are a few link for people new to soldering:

http://www.twyman.org.uk/PCB-Techniques/index-frame.htm

http://www.epemag.wimborne.co.uk/solderfaq.htm

http://users.telenet.be/educypedia/electronics/soldering.htm

One thing that not many guides tell you that I think is an important tools to have handy while soldering PCB is a can of compressed air.It cools the PCB when it begins to melt, and also is an effective tool for de-soldering, IMHO.

Finally, a link to see how to repair broken traces and lifted pads:
http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/repairing_traces_and_lifted_pads.htm