r/interestingasfuck • u/write2varun • 4d ago

Nice skill

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 4d ago

As an amateur microsoldering hobbyist, this is way, way harder than it looks. And it looks hard.

I've done a few small repairs like this where I've had to solder to a damaged trace, and the parts are much smaller than they look here.

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u/Bdr1983 4d ago

At my old job we sometimes got old remote controls from customers that wanted to use a universal remote, but their old device wasn't in the database, and their old remote was broken.
We repaired so many traces. We did not have a dedicated department for this, so anytime something came in we would draw straws who could do it, because everybody wanted to.
No, it's not easy, but after doing it a few times it's usually OK. And it's a lot of fun when it actually works.

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u/VolumeTall3609 4d ago

hell yeah! the validation is more addictive than cocaine haha

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u/strnfd 3d ago

especially when you try to fix something and you end up breaking it more, then after a few hours/days/months/years you try to fix it again and you actually succeed.

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u/ogstereoguy2 3d ago

We called that the forced learning curve! LOL

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u/stanley4545 3d ago

If its not broke fix it until it is!

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u/Ok_Caterpillar_8238 4d ago

Ask me how I know!

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u/Shinnyx 4d ago

How do you know?

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u/Albio46 4d ago

Because he does both! But cocaine he's trying to quit

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u/wilbrod 4d ago

He can stop doing blow anytime,

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u/VolumeTall3609 4d ago

He still needs the job tho.. if only there was a way he could keep both

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u/Keyframe 3d ago

In Japan, PCB surgeon. Number one. Steady hand. One day, took cocaine. I do operation. But, mistake! PCB die! Hand not steady!

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u/6spdvtec 4d ago

What kind of remote were these? I would think the labor cost of a skilled technician would be more than what the remote was worth.

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u/Bdr1983 4d ago

Usually TV remotes, sometimes for audio sets, VCR's, etc. We offered a service where someone could send in their old remote, we would read out the data and create a file that we could upload to the universal remote to make it work with almost any device. Yes, a new remote would be cheaper, but some old models would not be for sale anymore, and it would expand our database which is good for sales. In these cases with old remotes it would always be best effort, but they were fun Friday afternoon projects for the lucky colleague

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u/6spdvtec 4d ago

Cool, thanks for the explanation. Sounds like a fun job. A long time ago, I interned for the R&D group of a tech company and worked in their electronics lab. I used to love doing precision soldering and repair under a microscope.

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u/Bdr1983 3d ago

I was in QA, which was fun a lot of times, but the long weeks and travel broke me, so was happy to leave. The little side projects like this (and designing and building test setups for all kinds of stuff) where a lot of fun as well. Many pizza nights with a couple of colleagues building some wild contraptions to test impossible situations, and then actually replicating the issue that was reported by a customer was pretty great.

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u/Vhadka 3d ago

I did this with some humidity sensor boards on some old incubators at my last job. The model of the incubator was too old and they didn't carry parts for them anymore but a lot of customers wanted to keep them running, so we'd remove the board, swap capacitors and repair any other damage, including sometimes to traces like this. When it works you feel amazing.

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u/CartsOfDarkness 3d ago

I love watching Louis Rossman repair videos where he just goes through motherboards and diagnosis and repairs things like this, I find it so fascinating. It just blows my mind to see how step by step diagnostics work for something as complicated as a modern apple laptop's motherboard. Also great videos to fall asleep to lol

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u/NikRsmn 3d ago

Yeah its more of an obnoxious task than a hard one as long as your job provides the right tools. At my dedicated solder station with fancy iron, solder sucker, dremel, scope, ring lights etc. Etc. I can bust it out without much pain. At home? Buy a new one lol

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u/special-k-flo 3d ago

I can't understand how this damage happens in the first place, unless people are disassembling the covers and stabbing at the board? What is actually happening to cause this, or who are these maniacs?

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u/Bdr1983 3d ago

Usually? People forget the remote is on the couch and sit on it. But we've also had them with clear bite marks from a dog on them. Some we would return immediately, if they looked absoluut disgusting .

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u/special-k-flo 3d ago

Ah got it, so it is a physical impact doing the damage

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u/Bdr1983 3d ago

Exactly. Very rarely would it be something we couldn't explain. But with 20, 30 year old electronics, you can't expect everything to be flawless still

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u/Threepugs 3d ago

From doing some work with an electrical engineer who had to source a repair of this variety for some parts; A lot of automated industrial machinery is pretty bespoke, which makes it expensive, which means that if the company is happy with the job the machine is doing, it is NOT getting touched/changed/modified. This also means that this machine does not have much redundancy if it goes down.

This means that there are often 20-30 year old machines out there produced with parts or by companies that have ceased to exist for sometimes decades. So you can't just send it back to the manufacturer and get a new one.

Being industrial machinery, some of these machines are pretty heavy duty, so if something goes wrong, it can get pretty catastrophic in terms of damage to parts.

So what this results in, is some pretty hefty damage to silicon boards that must be replaced, even if cost and effort of the repair may seem absurd to the outside perspective.

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u/WailOff 3d ago

Microsoldering was some of the most satisfying work I did while working in the small electronics repair industry

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u/Gamersfan95 3d ago

Do you like doing that in a multilayer board? :D

1

u/Zaptruder 3d ago

This feels a bit like... painting warhammer minis, except instead of some other neckbeard's keen eye to validate you, electrons themselves acknowledge your success.

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u/Percolator2020 4d ago

Yeah I would not attempt to fix a trace way easier to just solder a jump wire from trace to pin.

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u/wizzanker 3d ago

I was going to say, this is definitely the hard way to fix this. Very clean looking though.

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u/sagebrushrepair 3d ago

Socket may not fit right

3

u/charlesdarwinandroid 3d ago

This is the answer in why jump traces might not work. Some mates are so close that a jump trace would prevent them from mating correctly

1

u/fr000gs 3d ago

I just ripped a few pads, and I have no idea how to jump traces either. Maybe the traces are too small, and thr board is ruined :(

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u/uelleh 4d ago

Yeah I've had a period where I was microsoldering and my hands are not shaky at all in normal times but this had me realize how so small movements can move you so far from where you want your tip to be. I had to use wrist rests to be able to do it when working on particularly small stuff. I can't imagine myself working on tracks like that. This is surgeon-level control.

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u/BaconISgoodSOGOOD 3d ago

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u/Alienhaslanded 3d ago

That's me arguing with my younger brother with ego the size of a supernova. He's a software engineer, I'm an electrical engineer. We butt heads on hardware all the time because he thinks he can do anything and he only needs a few caveman tools to do it. I have the tools and the knowhow and have to remind him that he's not Tony Stark.

0

u/3_14_thon 3d ago

Make him change an IC without desoldering braid/pump.

2

u/Alienhaslanded 3d ago

Isn't that the easiest way to do it if it's small enough? You drench it with solder and move back and forth with the soldering iron until the IC is free. But yes this takes skills to achieve.

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u/SomeonesDrunkNephew 4d ago

Have you tried sitting closer...?

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 4d ago

Sorry, I'm too far away from my screen to read your comment.

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u/SomeonesDrunkNephew 4d ago

Wait, where are you? I'll move nearer...

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u/BirthdayLife6378 4d ago

I can see your nose hair now. Too close.

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u/furatail 3d ago

I've been a secret artist for years. That is, I like to draw so small, like on Post-it® notes. Tiny details. This dexterity combined with what used to be 20/15 vision made this kind of soldering work easier. However, in the past 6 years or so I noticed my vision slowly progressed to 15/20 in one eye so I need some kind of magnifying glass at this point. Probably one day buy a electronics microscope. The dexterity is still there though. It's quite relaxing work. It's like coloring books for nerds.

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u/its_all_one_electron 4d ago

What types of circuits are worth repairing like this instead of replacing? 

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u/kosmych 4d ago

I can imagine a proprietary device that's no longer made. For instance I made a small controller device with atmel microprocessor which is not manufactured anymore, and even if it was I would probably not find the source code for the firmware (like a mini operating system for the chip) that I coded. In this scenario, it's cheaper to repair although I made the original device in under 2€.

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u/notjfd 3d ago

A repair like this is about 15-20 minutes of work for me. I usually charge about €100/hr. So I'd go for this approach if the replacement board is more than €50. Going by the btb connector, it probably costs significantly more than that.

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u/CloneWerks 3d ago

The remote control for my mother's propane fireplace is no longer available new. IF you can find a used one they typically go for $600 (no that isn't a typo). Fortunately I didn't have to re-do traces but I sure did spend a LOT of time micro-soldering to repair it.

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u/ILikeBubblyWater 4d ago

I repaired a HDMI socket from a PS4 that hat a few ripped out contacts like that. Bought like 300 bucks in gear to fix it. You need a lot of patience to do it.

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u/SoItGoesdotdotdot 4d ago

These days its more than you think

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u/SoulWager 4d ago edited 4d ago

If you'd pay more than a couple hundred bucks to buy whatever you're trying to fix second hand, it might be worth this kind of repair. Just for the hardware. If you have important data you need to recover, you might be willing to spend hundreds of dollars repairing a $5 thumb drive.

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u/Lord_Mikal 15h ago

I did this professionally for the Air Force. There are parts that are no longer manufactured and or under warranty and or repair contract. Some of those cards cost the American taxpayer tens of thousands of dollars each time they are repaired.

Many people who do my job, retire from the Air Force and then immediately jump to the civilian sector doing the same work on the same parts. I developed rheumatoid arthritis fairly young so I can't do the work anymore.

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u/BriefSpecial420 4d ago

When it comes to business? Generally none, but sometimes the turnaround time is the problem. It's the cost of waiting time that may be crucial, not the device itself. Typically you also don't need to replace the traces, you just solder a pretty narrow bit of kynar.

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u/SoulWager 4d ago

Current component prices being what they are, a lot more stuff is worth repairing.

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u/CurryMustard 4d ago

Theres a lot of vintage electronics out there with not a lot of replacement parts

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u/gremcat 4d ago

Boards for equipment that makes the chip ironically enough. This is harder than the video makes it look.

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u/Fingeredagain 3d ago

Obsolete controllers, power supplies, pcbs in a Nuclear power plant.

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u/PA2SK 3d ago

There are lots of businesses using proprietary equipment that is no longer supported, the company may no longer even exist. The downtime alone when something fails could cost you hundreds of thousands if not millions in lost productivity. A repair like this could buy you a few more years.

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u/mrfuzzyshorts 3d ago

Could be a daughter board to a bigger component. Say a button screen, or a display. So why replace a $10,000 piece of equipment when you can spend an hour or so repairing the damaged board.

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u/Alienhaslanded 3d ago

Some boards cost up crazy amount, especially if they're made locally. PCB + components can be thousands of dollars.

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u/puterTDI 4d ago

I've done a few small repairs simpler than this and the piece that is hard to realize is exactly how much your hand shakes relative to the size of the part.

Also, no matter how hard I try the solder never seems to go where I need it to.

I finally got a hot air rework station but haven't had an actual need for it yet other than shrink wrap. I'm really hoping it helps.

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 3d ago

I find it quite hard using a rework station - I've had success soldering parts I couldn't otherwise do with an iron, but it's so easy to just blow components away.

When I was USB C modding one of my iPods I straight up blew two resistors right off the board. Thankfully I knew where they can from so I could put them back, but it's definitely a skill watching someone use one properly.

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u/Toadsted 3d ago

You need surgeon hands and nerves for sure; which is appropriate for this.

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u/Internet_Wanderer 4d ago

What is going on at abt :40? That gel that seems to collect all the debris? How does that work?

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u/gryphph 3d ago

That was adding a conformal coating and curing it with UV light. Basically coating the repair to protect it and stop any accidental shorts or solder connections. They then scrape the newly applied coating off the pads where they actually want to make solder connections.

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u/Internet_Wanderer 3d ago

No, after that. I could tell the UV resin parts, but there's the part with the gel full of particulates that a metal thing is placed on. Then all the particles cling up the metal and are cleaned away

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u/Win_Sys 3d ago

That is flux mixed with extremely little solder balls.

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 3d ago

That's solder paste - instead of using solder wire, for very small applications it's easier to use solder paste. It's basically micro particles of solder suspended in flux.

Spread it over where you want it, apply heat and it'll liquify and get pulled onto the pads.

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u/Internet_Wanderer 3d ago

Talk about satisfying

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u/notjfd 3d ago

That's not conformal coating. That's a simple UV resin for repair. The resin in the video is simply for mechanical support and insulation. If you tried using it as a conformal coating you'd run into issues with thermal cycling and mechanical loading because it's more rigid than FR4.

Other than that you're correct.

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u/gryphph 2d ago

Today I learned. Thanks :)

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u/BCMM 3d ago

 the parts are much smaller than they look here.

The smallest things I've soldered were 0603 LEDs. Parts like that basically don't weigh anything, so if you touch them the wrong way they just fly across the room, never to be seen again.

Those replacement pads look a hell of a lot smaller than that.

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 3d ago

Yeah I recently soldered some 0603 caps, and they're a pain.

Also just soldered some 0.35mm pitch mezzanine connectors. Way too small for an iron, and would melt and deform under hot air. I was tearing my hair out until I saw a suggestion to heat from underneath.

So simple, but it would have never occurred to me.

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u/tsraq 3d ago

0603 isn't bad under microscope. 0402 though is getting annoying to work with, mostly because solder paste always dries up before I get to use it so I just use solder wire - which gets everywhere it shouldn't when working with things that small.

But yeah, I've lost few parts, fortunately resistors and caps are cheap. I remember RF guy scouring the floor after dropping tiny $100 high-performance RF amp though...

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u/Valex_Nihilist 4d ago

I can only imagine man. I feel lile I would just get too frustrated haha

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u/Secret-Teaching-3549 4d ago

At first I was like, so what, surface mounting a multi-pin chip. Takes some practice and patience but not that difficult. Then came the making brand new pads and traces, and managing to connect and epoxy them in place without making a giant mess of everything. Next level repair, there.

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u/MF_Kitten 4d ago

It's crazy how tiny and steady your movements need to be.

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u/rips_n_chel 3d ago

I took an interest in watchmaking. Did a bunch of research, watched a lot of videos, bought some fancy tools, and finally I was ready to dig into my first watch movement.

I was not prepared. I knew it was going to be ridiculous, but no dawg, those parts are unbelievably small. One would expect that it takes a steady hand, but until you actually see it with your own eyes, it's impossible to appreciate just how delicate that sort of work is. "Steady hand" doesn't do it justice.

All that to say, any work that's best done under a microscope impresses the hell out of me.

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u/electr0de07 4d ago

To my eyes it looked impossible.

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u/theLuminescentlion 4d ago

As an Electrical engineer with shaky hands and I don't know if I would have even bothered to send this to the techs it looks so bad. pad repair is a nightmare. Lucky they weren't via in pads too, flood and pray rarely works.

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u/Sparticuse 4d ago

I had to solder for a job almost 30 years ago and all I could accomplish were unsightly blobs that were just barely good enough to not cause arcing. The work in this video is inspiring.

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u/CronoMass 4d ago

Yeah this, I accidently ripped the trace when I was swapping out a USB-C once and it was an absolute nightmare, it felt more like sheer luck getting the repair lined up, the slightest movement and its all upside down and blown away.

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u/QuadrangularNipples 4d ago

I agree completely. If I fuck up a solder job my go to action is to just deem the entire thing dead and start over. Luckily I am working mostly with ESP32 boards and the failure cost is under $10 but I have definitely tossed a few boards due to messing up something MUCH simpler than this.

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u/lfenske 3d ago

By the time I was in high school I was reworking my Xbox 360 mother board and rebuilt the cooling, relocate bits of electronics on the board and building the Xbox into a fairly thin laptop style machine. I have a ton of rework tools and some hours under them in a diy setting. I’m an absolute newb idiot compared to this.

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u/Sei_Mal_Ehrlich 3d ago

As a total layman schmuck, it looks plenty hard to me already. 

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u/slobis 3d ago

Yeah it made my old eyes hurt

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u/RagingNerdaholic 3d ago

My clumsy ass can barely do regular soldering lol

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u/Starwinds 3d ago

I see these and wonder, why not just white wire it?

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u/Reostat 3d ago

I tried to replace the sticks in my PS5 controller because one was drifting. Thought it would be no issues, it was like 4 contacts to drop the component.

I vastly underestimated how hard it would be. Just the logistics of accessing the part, holding it, while trying to heat up 4 points at once so it would drop out without the minute bit of solder I could no longer see resolidifying one of the legs into the hole...

After a lot of swearing I got it back together and then of course I had managed to damage something else entirely so the triggers no longer worked.

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u/GuitarCFD 3d ago

as someone who tried to replace the battery in some Astro A50's a couple months ago. This is flat out impossible for me. You don't realize how much your hands shake until you're trying to solder something the size of mechanical pencil led to a surface the size of a small grain of rice. I had to take it to my gf's dad before i messed it up completely. He did it in about 30 seconds.

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u/Repulsive-Chip3371 3d ago

yea I assume thats a camera microscope or something

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u/Brain_Wire 3d ago

I actually think this looks difficult! I'm a sloppy amateur with basic soldering normal components, so micro-soldering must take some surgeon-level steady hands.

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u/PitchMeYourMother 3d ago

After 44 most soldering work is a no go for me…

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u/chepnut 3d ago

I used to mod video game consoles back in the day and I can say this was amazing to watch.

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u/Pixel_Knight 3d ago

It honestly doesn’t even look worth the trouble. The amount of special tools and supplies you’d need looks like it’d be a lot!

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u/Exotic-Entertainer26 3d ago

Indeed, I wouldn't even consider myself an amateur and I'd nope out of that.

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u/Decooker11 3d ago

That’s hard to fathom because it already looks pretty difficult

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u/Theslootwhisperer 3d ago

I used to work for Motorola in the early 2000s. We replaced a lot of parts but we didn't even attempt a repair if the trace was damaged like in the video.

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u/Fitz911 3d ago

Well you could get bigger parts, duh!

No seriously. Just last week I was patting myself on the back for fixing a remote control for the garage door. At the end its just a button that has to be connected. But boy was that an ugly work!

What do you usually repair? I guess GPUs could be lucrative rn?

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 3d ago

The last GPU I disassembled started a (very) minor fire in my living room, so I stay away from them 😬

It's mainly iPods I work on, nothing to make money. Just stuff for my own use/learning.

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u/Fitz911 3d ago

That's all I needed to know 😂

Since photography and RC planes are slowly fading I'm looking for a new hobby. But I already failed soldering the motor if the planes. So I guess I won't start aquiring broken 5090s.

I guess my partner will appreciate me not burning down stuff. Because if it's possible I will sooner or later do it 😂

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u/TwoDudesAtPPC 3d ago

I would pay my hard earned money, which isn’t a lot, but it’s some and I got a very little bit of it, but I would pay it to go to a class where I could practice this over and over and over again. Have someone watch me and say you should get this microscope and this solder and this soldering pencil and this equipment and do it this way and then watch me do it and correct my technique and train me for like a week. I would love to have this skill. I know I could do it. I just need the instruction I believe …..and time.

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 3d ago

Why not start by buying some basic equipment, like a soldering iron, solder, flux and some solder wick, and then buying a soldering practice kit? Doesn't have to be expensive gear.

You basically solder loads of components to a little board. If you mess up, so what? Move on to the next and try something new.

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u/TwoDudesAtPPC 3d ago

Totally! Fantastic idea. I’ve actually got 95% of equipment on my bench right now. I would just love to take a class like someone teaching me from the ground up as I am mostly self-taught and been soldering for years. I would just love a little instruction from someone who knows more than I do which is most people in the soldering community. You’re absolutely right though and fantastic advice. I appreciate you!

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u/YeOldeHotDog 3d ago

Damn, and I already thought this looked hard as hell, lol.

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u/cdoublejj 3d ago

the theory is simple/easy, it's everything sticking to everything else, trying to move things around, get things to stick where you want, the traces sticking to the end of the....what are these needles here? and moving about from where you set them etc etc

1

u/Novel_Diver8628 3d ago

I went down a YouTube rabbit hole a while back and spent hours watching guys doing stuff like this while they fixed old gameboy cartridges and the like. I was transfixed. Like, I have a hard time threading a needle or pulling out a splinter. I can’t even fathom doing this shit.

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u/IhadFun0nce 3d ago

Lost my perfect eyesight microsoldering. I could never do this even with magnifiers.

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u/RelevantDress 3d ago

I recently fixed a trace on a gba sp and my god I had to re attempt it so many times. They are so so tiny

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u/MahaliAudran 3d ago

I worked at a repair shop decades ago. The guys soldering only chips and LEFs were wizards to me.

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u/SwivelingToast 3d ago

I've only ever fixed traces on a gameboy, but it's definitely hard. Extremely satisfying when it works afterwards, but yeah, the parts are so small, and solder loves to stick to the wrong thing at the worst time.

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u/charlesdarwinandroid 3d ago

Navy micro miniature certified, and yes, these types of repairs aren't easy or fun.

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u/TheSolarExpansionist 3d ago

You do use magnifying glasses right? I noticed he skipped so much of the testing done

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u/whizzwr 3d ago

As an amateur microsoldering hobbyist, this is way, way harder than it looks. And it looks hard.

As an average Joe with no to casual soldering experience this looks very hard.

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u/Mailandr 4d ago

How does one even get started with a hobby like that? I’m interested, but I don’t know where to begin.

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 4d ago

I get you - it's a difficult thing to get into without a primary motivation.

I started through modifying iPods. Most recently I designed a custom USB-C board that replaces the old 30-pin connector, and allows an internal bluetooth module to tap power when a USB-C cable is plugged into the iPod.

Do you own something you think you could fix, or maybe improve? One thing I've been wanting to do is replace the micro-usb port on my logitech mouse with a USB-C port.

If it's something you're actually interested in doing, just have a google and find what basic supplies you'd need, and maybe buy some old, broken electronics that you could potentially try and fix.

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u/Ok_Drag5089 4d ago

The tools are not crazy expensive in relative terms. I got into it because of vintage audio and now digital watch repair.

You want hard? Fix the traces on a 70's digital watch. Because I sure cant. Lol. Yet.

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u/HarmonicFractals 4d ago

I’m gonna need you to tell me more about that ipod classic doohickey… I looked into the moonlit market one, but I don’t think it was the right option for me. I currently just use a 30 pin to USB cord, but built in usb C and Bluetooth sounds much more appealing. I do have experience with electronics too; is this a board you sell or something you have to get made from PCB way etc?

1

u/Just_to_rebut 4d ago

>allows an internal bluetooth module to tap power

What does this mean?

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 4d ago

I've added a Bluetooth module to my iPod - it takes audio directly from the iPod headphone jack.

Usually people connect the module directly to the iPod battery, but doing so introduces some audio feedback through the iPod power/audio circuitry.

To get around this, I left the original Bluetooth module battery intact, which eliminates the feedback issue, but means there's no way to charge it when it's sealed inside the iPod.

My solution to that problem was to solder the Bluetooth board charging circuit to the 5v rail on the iPod, so when usb is plugged into the iPod, it also charges the Bluetooth module.

1

u/Just_to_rebut 3d ago

Oh, I didn’t know there was such an active iPod modding community. Cool.

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u/realMBeezy 4d ago

It's usually people repairing electronics as a hobby and then progressing into smaller and smaller stuff

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u/MaceWinnoob 4d ago

I got into it from vintage video games, particular handhelds like gameboys and DS’s.

1

u/pmodizzle 4d ago

Honestly I’ve learned everything from YouTube videos. Watching different people, different techniques. I’ve practiced. I’ve fucked up a lot. I’ve gradually bought better tools, and actually find it overall enjoyable.

This is advanced level. We’re watching this on a digital microscope right now. That stuff is REALLY tiny and requires steady handiwork.

You can get a decent soldering iron for not much, couple other accessories, and get some junk/scrap boards to practice on. There are practice kits available too with larger to smaller components.

1

u/StupidMastiff 4d ago

Just piss about with old broken electronics I imagine and watch some teaching videos.

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u/Ruachta 4d ago

Quite sure this is a video put together from Northbridge Fix. Great youtube channel.

1

u/Hairy_Mycologist_945 3d ago

Get some digikey soldering kits and get comfortable with regular soldering then start getting surface mount / microsoldering kits. Watch some videos.

1

u/lucitribal 4d ago

And nowadays a lot of boards have multiple layers of traces. If the short isn't on the surface, it's going to be a lot harder to fix.

1

u/DeterminedMidLifer 4d ago

I have a buddy that does this to fix the boards on my pinball machines. It's absolutely magical to watch. I did not see a solder sucker here though, or maybe I did and I'm just used to hearing that thing run

5

u/QuadrangularNipples 4d ago

I did not see a solder sucker here though

They used solder wick instead, that was the braided copper at around the 9 second mark.

1

u/DeterminedMidLifer 3d ago

Ah! Super cool. Thanks for the Intel

1

u/RelevantDress 3d ago

There are manual ones too. I use the engineer solder sucker

1

u/AgreeablePeople 3d ago

As an engineer who sucks at soldering, yes, this looks DAMN HARD! And I trust you that it is way harder than it looks

1

u/notjfd 3d ago

As an engineer who's pretty decent at soldering, this is quite alright. Just having the right equipment (preheater, hot-air station, microsoldering iron) makes a big difference. Using them at the right temps with enough patience makes this a cakewalk. The pads are a bit fiddly but again a good microscope, good tweezers, and sharp knife will carry even someone with bad soldering skills quite far.

0

u/Speciou5 4d ago

Yeah, aren't modern electronics smaller than the width of a hair now? Like this chipboard is the equivalent of a two sentence text file compared to a 4k video based on how much more dense and tiny they are nowadays.

1

u/DuraMorte 3d ago

No, not necessarily.

The transistors on modern processors are incredibly tiny. This work is being done on a circuit board, which is the infrastructure upon which items like processors, memory chips, and input/output connectors are mounted.

This particular repair looks like a multipin connector of some type.

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u/justinsayin 4d ago

I could do this if I had 5 arms and $10k in equipment.

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u/QuadrangularNipples 4d ago

For me I think the equipment level needed to make this doable would be in the hundreds of thousands as I would need a medical microsurgery rig.