Hello,

in the past I have soldered quite a few THT components on custom made boards and even done some repairing from time to time. I also soldered some simple SMT devices (bigger ics, capacitors, resistors, transistors...). So let' say that I have some experiences with soldering but I'm not an expert by all means. A few weeks ago my laptop stopped working and that was a good opportunity to give a fresh start to my electronics work.

So with a little bit of diagnostics and online search, I was able to find a problem, which was caused by the defective ceramic capacitors in 805 package. With to soldering irons I was able to remove the two capacitors, that were diagnosed as defective, but it was kind a hard. So I cleaned the pads using wire wick and start with the soldering of a new capacitors and that's when the real mess begins. I was unable to do a good job in soldering those capacitors back. The capacitor pads are a part of a big plane on both side of the board and the actual contact area is so small that's almost totally covered by the capacitor and that makes it impossible to heat it directly with an soldering iron.

I wonder what is the usual procedure in that case, preheating the boar with hot air or what do you suggest?

Thank you very much in advance.

 

805's are the typical smt size I use, and so far, I hand solder everything. What size tip is on your iron? Is it temperature regulated? Were you using leaded solder (that's all I use)? My solder is also fine gauge, about 0.015" dia.

Preheating will certainly help. The other thing I do is use is a short piece of music wire (about 0.030" dia) as a spring to hold the chip down while getting one end stuck. (That is, unless I use CA to glue the chip to the board first.) Then, I solder the other end and return to the first end to resolder and complete the job.