Using silicon to cover exposed tracings

TheFrag · Jul 31, 2004

So I have some broken traces on a peice of hardware that I need to repair. I drew in some little "trenches" connecting the traces and then filled them in with conductive paint. Unfortunatley, I seemed to of made them to close together and caused a short. Would it be safe to remove the paint than fill in the "hole" with the silcione, and then remake the trenches?

I also was going to try bridging them with some wire, but a bunch of the traces are exposed. They are close together, so soldering would be unbelievably hard to impossible. I know I can cover these up with Acrylic Clear Nail Polish, but I just wanted to make sure I could.

If I can use the silicon, what type should I use and where may I find it?

Thanks!

arabarabian · Aug 1, 2004

What are these traces on? An AMD CPU? You could you a small quantity of silicon to fill them back up to make them paintable again.

TheFrag · Aug 1, 2004

Its on a motherboard, actually.
So I could probably use Silcion then?
Where could I find it?

arabarabian · Aug 1, 2004

I have never done it on a motherboard but it should work just fine. As for where you can get silicone, I would recomend a hardware store or automotive store.

TheFrag · Aug 1, 2004

Ok, sounds good.
Do you remember how much it cost/what amounts they come in?
I will probably do it when I get back from vacation in a week.
Thanks!

HiProfile · Aug 2, 2004

TheFrag said:
So I have some broken traces on a peice of hardware that I need to repair. I drew in some little "trenches" connecting the traces and then filled them in with conductive paint. Unfortunatley, I seemed to of made them to close together and caused a short. Would it be safe to remove the paint than fill in the "hole" with the silcione, and then remake the trenches?

I'm not even going to get a better explaination of this...just give you my ideas.

Assuming they are the smallest traces usually found on a motherboard, don't try soldering. If you have another spare motherboard you can test for 100+ hours on, have a micro-point adjustable-temp soldering iron, and brain-surgeon-like steady hands - by all means try soldering. Otherwise get some clear packaging tape and an Automotive Defroster Repair Kit (liquid type). Before you try this, very carefully remove the protective coating over the traces. The tape will get you very clean lines when you lay 2 pieces down on either side of the trace - basicly covering everything around it besides the copper of that single trace. Then paint the broken trace, not going more than 3mm past the actual break on either side. Let dry, remove tape SLOWLY - and it should work.

I'm guessing you were going to cover the trace in silicone, then cut it between each trace? Silicone is an insulator, not a cunductor. The only way I can see silicone helping is if you use silicon instead of tape in the above how-to, but then you'd get very unstraight lines. If you do want get some anyways, they sell it in small quantities as RTV Silicone in every hardware store. The silicone they use for bathrooms gets much harder, but comes bigger tubes (both hand-squeeze and caulk gun type tubes).

TheFrag · Aug 6, 2004

HiProfile said:
I'm not even going to get a better explaination of this...just give you my ideas.

Assuming they are the smallest traces usually found on a motherboard, don't try soldering. If you have another spare motherboard you can test for 100+ hours on, have a micro-point adjustable-temp soldering iron, and brain-surgeon-like steady hands - by all means try soldering. Otherwise get some clear packaging tape and an Automotive Defroster Repair Kit (liquid type). Before you try this, very carefully remove the protective coating over the traces. The tape will get you very clean lines when you lay 2 pieces down on either side of the trace - basicly covering everything around it besides the copper of that single trace. Then paint the broken trace, not going more than 3mm past the actual break on either side. Let dry, remove tape SLOWLY - and it should work.

I'm guessing you were going to cover the trace in silicone, then cut it between each trace? Silicone is an insulator, not a cunductor. The only way I can see silicone helping is if you use silicon instead of tape in the above how-to, but then you'd get very unstraight lines. If you do want get some anyways, they sell it in small quantities as RTV Silicone in every hardware store. The silicone they use for bathrooms gets much harder, but comes bigger tubes (both hand-squeeze and caulk gun type tubes).

You see, that is what I was trying to do. However, since their are multiple traces broken within 2 mm from each other, I was using a pin to draw a line in the pcb. Then, I applied te conductive paint so that it was in the gaps. However, I messed up on one of them, so the paint was touching, causing a short.

I want to use the silcone, to fill in the gaps (They are actually pretty deep now...) and then retry painting it.

HiProfile · Aug 7, 2004

Well, I've had experience seperating traces with a razor blade, so it should work for you. All you have to do is 'outline' the traces with the blade, effectively cutting between them, which cuts each and every short. Good luck.

Mark620 · Aug 7, 2004

Just dont go very deep because there are other traces below those. most mobos have 2-6 layers of traces on each side....

Using silicon to cover exposed tracings

TheFrag

Member

arabarabian

Member

TheFrag

Member

arabarabian

Member

TheFrag

Member

HiProfile

Member

TheFrag

Member

HiProfile

Member

Mark620

Member

Similar threads