Soldering skills (lacking) for small holes - how to

edelgiud

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Hey guys, I'm working on a Taito board to change a few components and it is really hard to desolder even a regular capacitor. This reminds me of a Bally Midway board same kind of small pins with very little solder.
What skills am I missing here? I have a decent thin tip, is the temperature not enough in the middle setting there? I tried adding solder first. I still can't sucker out anything there. I tried the soldering wick with a little flux and I'm still struggling. Never seen one so though. I guess I don't really see the solder melt, but I never applied more heat than this setting to work on any board and don't want to overdo it. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
 

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is the temperature not enough in the middle setting there?
A bigger tip would help, but definitely crank your temperature up... 600F is too low for desoldering from a large ground plane like that. I'd go up to 750... probably a bit higher than necessary, you're not going to damage anything on the GND plane at 750.

DogP
 
As others have said, your problem is simply not enough heat. (Or rather the board's ground plane is soaking it up faster than your iron can provide.)

Sente boards are similar in this regard. Anything that has either internal ground/power planes, or just really thick power/ground traces, will act this way.

Try any/all of the tricks:

- Increase iron temperature
- Thicker iron tip
- Add a dab of fresh solder to the joint first, which will help get more heat into the joint faster
- Leave the iron on the joint longer, to let more heat soak in
- Pre-heat the board with a heat gun (to get more heat into the area you're working in, so it sucks less out of your joint)

Sometimes in cases like this I won't use my Hakko gun, and will just heat the joint with the iron, and pull out the component. Then it's usually easier to work the solder out of the hole, using both sides of the board, after the part is removed.

Or, if you have a desoldering gun and it isn't enough, I'll take my iron in my left hand, and the gun in the right, and use the iron to provide extra heat to the joint before I pull the trigger.

I have that same iron. Been using it every other day for a decade, and it's still going.
 
As others have said, your problem is simply not enough heat. (Or rather the board's ground plane is soaking it up faster than your iron can provide.)

Sente boards are similar in this regard. Anything that has either internal ground/power planes, or just really thick power/ground traces, will act this way.

Try any/all of the tricks:

- Increase iron temperature
- Thicker iron tip
- Add a dab of fresh solder to the joint first, which will help get more heat into the joint faster
- Leave the iron on the joint longer, to let more heat soak in
- Pre-heat the board with a heat gun (to get more heat into the area you're working in, so it sucks less out of your joint)

Sometimes in cases like this I won't use my Hakko gun, and will just heat the joint with the iron, and pull out the component. Then it's usually easier to work the solder out of the hole, using both sides of the board, after the part is removed.

Or, if you have a desoldering gun and it isn't enough, I'll take my iron in my left hand, and the gun in the right, and use the iron to provide extra heat to the joint before I pull the trigger.

I have that same iron. Been using it every other day for a decade, and it's still going.
+1 for double iron method. this only works if you have earth grounded tools, I wound up destroying some things with Radio Shack irons in my newb period a long time ago :ROFLMAO:

I had some issues with multi layer boards spanning many years. I capped some PC motherboards a couple months ago and went through them like a hot knife through butter by running iron at 700 F and Hakko FR-301 at 2.5 instead of my usual 2. made the procedure a lot easier.

often on board where I replace header pins I employ dual iron so I can flow the solder evenly. I had an analog Weller iron like that for 8 years. the only reason it got replaced was because I had a job where I could afford to buy new stuff and if it were a car it would have like 500,000 miles on it. there's no advantage to the skinny tip, I use the stock one for everything including QFP surface mount nonsense (I don't enjoy this or recommend the inexperienced try it). I'm also not a Kester fan like the masses, I use Glowcore from Mouser.
 
+1 for double iron method. this only works if you have earth grounded tools, I wound up destroying some things with Radio Shack irons in my newb period a long time ago :ROFLMAO:
Wait. what? I only have one, and it's grounded, but what's the issue if one isn't? And whatever the issue is, is it only an issue if they are on the same power circuit? What if one is floating/battery powered?
 
As others have said, your problem is simply not enough heat. (Or rather the board's ground plane is soaking it up faster than your iron can provide.)

Sente boards are similar in this regard. Anything that has either internal ground/power planes, or just really thick power/ground traces, will act this way.

Try any/all of the tricks:

- Increase iron temperature
- Thicker iron tip
- Add a dab of fresh solder to the joint first, which will help get more heat into the joint faster
- Leave the iron on the joint longer, to let more heat soak in
- Pre-heat the board with a heat gun (to get more heat into the area you're working in, so it sucks less out of your joint)

Sometimes in cases like this I won't use my Hakko gun, and will just heat the joint with the iron, and pull out the component. Then it's usually easier to work the solder out of the hole, using both sides of the board, after the part is removed.

Or, if you have a desoldering gun and it isn't enough, I'll take my iron in my left hand, and the gun in the right, and use the iron to provide extra heat to the joint before I pull the trigger.

I have that same iron. Been using it every other day for a decade, and it's still going.
All of this... and this might be obvious from the above, but you can also use the soldering iron and a heat gun/hot-air at the same time. I sometimes do that with a soldering iron, but when desoldering through hole parts, I'll turn the board sideways and use desoldering gun on one side and the heat gun on the other. It's similar to what Andrewb is describing, but I don't have to be as exact with the positioning. (And I sometimes wish I had a hotplate, but it's not wroth the money/space to me for how little I would use it.)
 
Hot plate is worth every penny even if you use it twice. They're so cheap now it's silly.

I don't have anything else to add that hasn't already been said four times over by now beyond that.
 
I'd set that control over to about 1:30 on the clock. That should put you in the mid 600s.
 
OK guys, I managed to get it done. First, the thicker tip. Then it was easiest to add more solder to existing first and then either using a solder sucker or holding the iron on there till I can pull/pivot one leg of the capacitor on parts side and then eventually I used some flux to suck out the rest. Man this was hard. But your advice had me trying much harder to get it done. Still have a skill issue. I need to improve, thanks.
 

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