Hi,

I'm working on a project fitting a PSU circuit board in a very tight spot. I found some very compact PSU boards, but it is the connectors on the board that are causing them not to fit. I tried desoldering/resolding, and trashed the boards.

I'm wondering if anyone can help me solder these boards in the SoCal (LA) area. Hope this is OK - I looked through the guidelines and didn't see any related restrictions.

I puchased this board

and you'll notice the molex ATX connector. The area I'm placing the board is too tight if you plug in the cable. You can see in this picture how much additional space taken by the male/female molexes once you plug in the cable (see white molexes on left side, my case is tighter than this, I can upload pix later)

Therefore, I tried to desolder the male modex connected to the board, cut the wires connected to the female molex, and solder the wires directly to the board. Suffice to say the board is pretty trashed.


There's an even more compact board I would rather use seen here. This allows me to plug in directly into the motherboard, which is an actually tigher spot! In this scenario, the little white mini connectors get the way.

You'll notice the wires on the left side of the board are soldered directly to the board. Once again, I wanted to desolder the mini connectors and resolder the wires directly the to board. Once again - trashed board.

I can solder the wires to the board OK -proficient enough. But it was actually desoldering the connectors that trashed the boards.

Anyone in the greater LA area able to solder this precisely who can help me out?

Thanks!
-R

 

Here are some hints on desoldering. The problem is, of course, getting multiple contacts free at the same time. Have you tried solder wick? Have you tried a solder sucker?

Do you have access to a hot air gun like is used for plastic welding or just an industrial strength hot-air gun that gets hot enough to melt solder? I have had success heating, flicking the solder, then on the second heating being able to wiggle the part enough to get it free. You might even try it without the initial flicking step. It does look like the solder on at least the smaller board is lead-free, which requires a higher temperature.

Finally, a product called ChipQuick is made. As I understand it, ChipQuick is a bismuth alloy that you melt with the solder on a board to form a much lower melting alloy. Then the part can be removed with a simple hot-air gun. If you are up to experimenting, there are other low melting alloys to consider (such as Woods metal) that will also form low melting alloys with solder. Indium may seem attractive as an alloying metal, but as I understand it, has certain problems with some electroplatings. It is also expensive.

John