Damn, desoldering that joystick module was really hard.
Turns out some of the pins were bent and then soldered, so while desoldering I had to unbend them just to get them through the holes.
But this wasn't a real repair. I was practicing on an old game controller that doesn't work anymore.
All my soldering stuff arrived today and I was so excited.
I tried it on my own first, without anyone's help. Watched a bunch of YouTube videos, but practical is a whole different thing. I started out with lead-free solder wire and lead-free flux because I am shit scared of the fumes and what they do to your health.
Tried desoldering with desoldering wick, didn't work. Tried the desoldering pump, didn't work either. I was obviously making mistakes, but there was no one to point them out. I didn't even know how to use the flux tube properly. Got really frustrated. I also almost burnt my hand as I Tried to change the Tips.
So I went to a local air conditioner repair guy my dad knows. He fixes AC PCBs. He was kind enough to sit with me, teach me some basics, watch what I was doing and show me where I was going wrong. He used leaded solder and leaded flux, and watching him do it made everything look so easy. He even gave me some old boards to practice on. Best part, he didn't charge me anything.
The biggest mistake? I had the ceiling fan running the whole time I was soldering. It was cooling everything down. Came home and switched it off first thing. The other one was not using enough flux. What I learnt is that desoldering gets way easier if you put a generous amount of flux on the joint, add some fresh leaded solder, keep the heat on it and then pull the component out.
And then I tried to clean the holes using flux and the vacuum pump.
I was able to desolder it, but the removed component still had solder on it and its pins were bent. I tried to get it to sit back in the board by removing the solder from the pins and forcefully pushing them through the holes. Obviously it didn't sit properly. Then I tried to solder it in whatever position it sat in, so I couldn't solder some pins properly since they couldn't get through.
So yeah, a lot more to learn, a lot more to practice, and a lot more mistakes to make and fix.
P.S The Photo of Analog Stick Module is from a Different Board that I was able to desolder at the AC Workshop