Soldering For Non-Solderers? 130
DanielMarkham asks: "A few months ago I bought a 4GB USB drive from jmtek Online. I really liked the drive -- heck, 4 GBs were awesome! But over time, using it in my tablet PC, the connectors started loosening up between the USB plug and the IC. Eventually, the part that plugs into the computer came loose from the rest of the drive. So, now I've got six-hundred bucks worth of useless plastic. I don't know anything about circuit board repair, so I'm in a bit of a fix. As I understand it, the 90-day return period has timed-out, and there's not much I can do in the way of a refund. But all of my data is still on there, I just need some way to re-connect the USB plug to the circuit board. I guess that would involve soldering? Do you guys have any idea how I could get the USB drive fixed without spending a lot of time or money?"
Look for a local club... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good Luck!
Re:Look for a local club... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Look for a local club... (Score:2)
Re:Look for a local club... (Score:1)
I can't stress enough that you use the right tools [reresource.org]; a cheap-ass iron from radio shack ain't gonna cut it in my opinion. I got a very decent soldering station [mpja.com] for $35 a few months back and I am quite pleased with it.
Re:Look for a local club... (Score:2)
I have never used a droud, but I do know my way around a soldering iron.
Yeah, the average LUG attendee is less likely than a Ham or a robot builder to be able to help but it's better odds than just asking folks at random.
Re:Look for a local club... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Look for a local club... (Score:2)
Ham?
Not bacon?
Damn. That explains why that last rasher I bought did such a craptacular job soldering up the power supply connections. They reversed signal ground and earth ground, for $diety's sake!
Hmmp. I guess that means you've gotta be cautious which smoked pork products you entrust with your electronics fabrication jobs.
I wonder if bacon will work out better for plumbing....
Good question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good question (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe you are thinking of a hard drive?
USB drives are typically just a chip on a board.
Hard drives tend to have a circuit board seperate (but attached on the side) - but that can be removed. They usually have a connector of some kind between the board and the internals of the drive.
Or... am I just confused?
Re:Good question (Score:2)
USB Flash drives do, in fact, go up to 4GB. $600 for a 4GB HDD is called "Highway robbery."
Re:Good question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good question (Score:2)
Okay, red face here. I should have read the parent. Disregard my previous post.
Re:Good question (Score:2)
If you value your data (and your drive.....) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If you value your data (and your drive.....) (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps hobbying with acetylene welding has something to do with my "naturalness", because molten metal is molten metal for the most part.
If you do try to do it yourself, make sure you practice on something else! Don't freak out about solder bridges. A pass through the bridge with the iron (sometimes after a solder-wicking) usually disconnects them.
MAKE DEAD SURE to clean the area on the board and connector before you start. Then, remove as much solder as you can before you add your own. It will make your job much easier.
Re:If you value your data (and your drive.....) (Score:3, Informative)
Heat the area to be joined first, then add solder (or welding rod)
Which every welding instructor teaches you right away.
Re:If you value your data (and your drive.....) (Score:1)
Re:If you value your data (and your drive.....) (Score:2, Informative)
mind you, i'm only saying this because it sounds like easy soldering (i'm guessing the connector has big obvious pads). if it's a surface mount chip or somethi
Re:If you value your data (and your drive.....) (Score:2, Funny)
I bet you know someone that would do it for a bag of grass or a night of drinking or something along those lines.
Just might want to make sure they do the soldering BEFORE you "pay".....
Not soldering-related but... (Score:5, Informative)
USBDrive 4GB Weatherproof [jmtekstore.com]
Professional USBDrive 4GB Weatherproof [jmtekstore.com]
It would appear that both devices come with a 1-year warranty, so once you get your data off, I would contact them and tell them that it broke. (Assuming that it wasn't negligence that caused it anyway)
Get that thing replaced man, $600? Jeez. I'd want that thing fixed.
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2, Offtopic)
i know this doesn't solve his problem, but something to think about for all you would-be 4Gb USB key buyers.
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:1)
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
iPods are hard-drive based, right? If they are, they are suceptible (eek, someone correct that spelling) to the same problems, and sudden motion while spinning may cause problems.
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2, Insightful)
> (eek, someone correct that spelling)
I hope that by someone you mean, just-a-second-let-me-get-the-dictionary-and-prove- that-I-am-not-completely-lazy
Cause, really, you have a good point, and I would hate to see it obscured :)
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
I thought of another advantage to non-HD based storage:
Temperature changes will no longer cause physical damage. Turning on a drive while it heats from a cold temperature is dangerous.
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
ModPoints:Crack Usage::Time:Time
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
There are several very good dictionary sites on the web. Heck, I believe that Galeon used to ship with it and Google up next to the tool bar so you always had an quick link to them.
Kirby
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
Is there an extension for firefox that adds a dictionary search field (like it has the google search field)?
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:3, Informative)
Googling around, this page [dictionary.com] shows that there is something called "Firefox Ultrabar". I don't use Firefox (but I do use Mozilla). I'm not much of a plug-in head. However, assembling a dictionary.com HTTP request isn't significantly different, so presuambly, it should be trivial. Try putting these into google: "Firefox dictionary.com plugin".
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:1)
My version of Firefox had it right out of the box. Just click on the "G" in your search field and select "Dictionary.com". Done.
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:1)
-CH
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:1)
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
Or you could just learn to spell. ;)
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
Try clicking on the pulldown list next to the search box and see for yourself! This discussion is all about doing things yourself... take the hint.
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:1)
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
cheeck it out.
spellchecking in every text box you want.
Only to save people from clicking senselessly (Score:2)
2. Install FastDic (see link below)
3. Set up your favourite online dictionaries
4. Now you can Ctrl-click, Alt-click or even Shift-click on the word in question and query different dictionaries which open in a different tab.
5. Glee!!!
Link to FastDic: https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/more
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
Damage like... soldered connections coming loose. Metal and plastic and fiberglass expand and contract at different rates. Electrical connections particularly at a junction are vulnerable to temperature changes.
Excellent point (Score:2)
Their shock resistance is probably an order of magnitude (maybe a few orders of magnitude.) higher than that of an HDD, too.
Personally, I've ditched the USB thumb drives. I now go with a keychain SD card reader (SanDisk MobileMate SD+) and SD cards. So far I just have a single 512M SD card, but I can always add more, and the SD cards are more durable
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:2)
holding the iPod with your hand offers more than enough shock absorbtion to protect the hard drive.
Re:Not soldering-related but... (Score:1)
VCR repair shops (Score:4, Interesting)
Sheesh ... go to an old school TV repair shop (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot, why are you running away?
Soldering Sources (Score:4, Interesting)
well, it depends... (Score:5, Informative)
If the wire passes through a hole in the board, you need to clean the solder out of the hole. To do this, place the iron to the board and use a soldering wick (an absorbant copper mesh, probably available at Radio Shack) to soak up the excess solder. Then you can strip the insulation off the end of the wire (about 1/8 inch again), place the bare wire through the hole, apply solder and remove the iron. If the wire is stranded, you may want to twist the strands together a bit to keep them together. Trim off any excess wire sticking through the other side above the solder.
If you can't find soldering wick, you can heat the wire by placing the iron against it and gently poke the wire through the hole, melting the solder as you go. Finally, apply some solder to the board to secure the wire. This requires three hands and is recommended only as a last resort.
The thing you must be careful about is not overheating the board. If the iron is held in contact with it too long (more than a few seconds), other components may become unsoldered or the varnish may melt, producing nasty fumes, or the copper traces may separate from the board. If the last of these happens, you may be able to salvage it by replacing the failed traces with 30-gauge wire using techniques described in the first paragraph. This is unnecessary if you are careful though.
If you use rosin core or flux core solder, you should use a q-tip soaked in paint thinner to clean the newly soldered connection after it has cooled. This will prevent corrosion.
Finally, to keep this from happening again, it is best to secure the wire so that it does not flex near the solder joint, where it is brittle and prone to breaking. Nylon zip ties are good for this and should be placed around a structural component of your hardware and preferably not around the board itself.
If you don't want to risk ruining your good hardware right away, you may want to practice by soldering wires to an old token ring card or something.
As for the soldering iron, a small iron of less than 50 Watts is best for this kind of work. Do not use a soldering gun because they are bulkier and more difficult to control and certainly do not use the 300 watt model designed for copper roofing.
Good luck.
Let your fingers do the walking ... (Score:2, Insightful)
So much for old-fashioned American ingenuity and initiative, but I digress.
Re:Let your fingers do the walking ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let your fingers do the walking ... (Score:2)
As an American, am I really free to question her?
cost to have it repaired (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I'd say this is the perfect time to learn to solder. It's really not that difficult. The only real problem is that it can be scary. Disassemble the unit, and take a look at the size of the connection with the board. If the connections are similar in size on the inside as the USB plug is on the outside, by soldering standards that's pretty big and a pretty good thing to start with.
You can get someone who knows what they're doing to give you some tips, but all you really need is google, a 15 dollar soldering iron, 5 dollars worth of soft lead solder, and a little guts.
Here's what you need to do: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Here's what you need to do: (Score:2)
College (Score:3, Insightful)
Your local University or Community College has a Electrical/Electronics Engneering or Technician program with lots of students who will solder stuff for at low cost and might even help teach you how to do it. I've repaired quite a few devices that people brought into the school lab. Call up a professer (or department head if no individual instructor's numbers are public); they will probably be more then willing to give a student some work with real world troubleshooting and repair.
Re:College (Score:3, Informative)
Re:College (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry about your data loss.
Re:College (Score:2, Interesting)
basic guide to soldering (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.aaroncake.net/electronics/solder.htm
you may want to consider the thumb drive as a transport not a backup from now on. I killed a few drives myself.
pinout (Score:3, Interesting)
Referencing your orininal connector and getting pin numbers [pinouts.ru] simply connect the following pins to wire colors:
1-red
2-white
3-green
4-black
(ignore the shielding on the USB cable or connect it to ground (pin 4))
Re:pinout (Score:1)
Re:pinout (Score:2)
Yes (Score:4, Informative)
I did a laughably sloppy job of this with my MP3 player a year or so ago and posted the steps and pictures [cmu.edu] . You probably don't want to be this sloppy.
Re:Yes (Score:2)
Re:Yes (Score:2)
Make sure the electronics work before you cover the joint with that blob of epoxy though.
Call the company for service. (Score:2)
So it came loose... (Score:1)
My 128MB OTi drive's USB plug is loose, and so is the plastic shell. But the darn thing still works, and it's sitting in my pocket right now.
Jmtek can eat my... (Score:1)
Soldering toturial (Score:3, Informative)
Try the tutorial on this [elecraft.com] page. (I'm not linking to the pdf directly as they are not a huge company so don't kill their bandwidth)
Simple(NOT) (Score:2)
Here is a nice(expensive) SMD rework Kit here [engineeringlab.com]
There are cheaper kits if you dig a little deeper.
Credit Card (Score:1)
learn to solder elswhere - find a path repair spcl (Score:3, Informative)
If your data wasn't important and $600 is nothing to you, then i'd say buy some used smt soldering equipment from ebay, use some extra cards with smt chips and connectors to practice soldering on, have your test work checked by someone who knows what good circuit soldering is, buy the 16mb version of your drive and practice on it, then cross your fingers and try it for real.
Synchronistically Speaking (Score:2)
2. I search for hardware and tutorials on the internet, finding similar links provided in these responses.
3. You Ask Slashdot about soldering.
4. I find where my company is gearing up to do chip level testing on failed ICB's.
I think I may pursue this further.
Learn to solder. (Score:1)
Then (here's the important part) practice on stuff that you won't miss before you try repairing the drive. Raid your neighbor's garbage for old electronics and spend a few hours removing components, replacing them, tinning wires, etc.
Two nice online introductions to soldering (both originally produced by Nasa)
Re:Learn to solder. (Score:2)
Wow, I used to teach a course on that. WAYYY BACK...
manufacturers warranty? (Score:1)
I have an idea (Score:1)
Send it to me, I'll fix it and keep it!^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsend it right back to you!
Be careful (Score:2)
A colleage decided to salvage the cable by rewiring it as a passive extension cable, and hoping that the signal degradation wouldn't be a problem. He tested it on his USB flash drive, and somehow managed to fr
Similar happened to me (Score:1)
Next time I fit a new drive, I'll do it sober!
I miss Heathkit (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of you kids are too young to remember them as they were in their prime. They used to sell kits that allowed you to build almost anything electronic and you learned as you built. They had the very best documentation available anywhere for anything. Every manual started with a brief course in soldering. They also had some excellent training courses including.....soldering.
If this were the 1980's I would recommend that you purchase a kit from them. You would then learn to solder and be able to go on to fix your drive, and maybe go on to build one of their excellent amateur radio sets or TV's or robots.
Sigh
Re:I miss Heathkit (Score:1)
Re:I miss Heathkit (Score:2)
Re:I miss Heathkit (Score:2)
You're right that Heathkit by itself didn't teach anyone to be a pro. But it got me the basics, enough to really get a grip on things when the USAF taught me to be a pro. And yeah, getting qualified to solder on spacecraft parts was a totally different world...but it all started with that first kit.
Use eye protection (Score:2)
If you _do_ decide to learn to solder, use some form of eye protection, every time. I never took eye protection while soldering seriously, until the day I met a one-eyed technician who would have been a two-eyed technician had he worn safety glasses.
Seriously. Safety glasses are cheap. Wearing them is no hassle. Just do it.
Re:Use eye protection (Score:2)
Anyway, I couldn't find my safety glasses, so I used goggles instead. They kept fogging up, so I said "Screw it".
A few minutes later, the joint I was working on looked a little iffy, so I go to rework it.
Well there was some tension stored there. As soon as the solder melted, the lead flicked a tiny blob of solder right onto th
Warrantee (Score:2)
Soldering (Score:5, Informative)
- don't be hung over, or have drank too much coffee. Your hands need to be steady.
- when working on small circuits, a magnifying glass is helpful. There's things called 'helping hands' which will hold the components to be soldered in the right position, and also have a positionable magnifying glass with a light.
- clean all oxidation off of the metal surfaces to be soldered, using light duty sandpaper, steel wool, or a chemical compound called "rosin". Make sure you use rosin acceptable for electronics, plumbing rosin is often acidic and will damage electronic components.
- use solder of appropriate guage to what you're working on. Probably you want really tiny solder.
- physically attach the two metal surfaces, with a vise or what have you. Make you you leave enough room to get the iron in, and still be able to see what's going on.
- clean the tip of the iron, heat it up, then apply a small amount of solder to the iron itself. This is known as 'tinning' the iron.
- apply the solder on one side of the metal surfaces, and put the soldering iron on the other. The idea here is that the metal surfaces have to be hot enough to keep the solder from 'balling up' and running off the board, or otherwise creating a 'cold solder joint'. it shouldn't take more than ten seconds from the tip you place the soldering iron on the metal joint to when the solder on the other side starts to melt. If it takes longer, use a higher power soldering iron
- don't use too much solder or too little. It's hard to explain this in words, just look at other soldering joint done by professionals and you should see what it looks like
- apply heat just long enough to completely melt and spread the solder around the joint. Leaving the iron on too long can overheat components.
- if you don't apply heat long enough, or if you bump the joint while its cooling, you may create acold solder joint. This will have a pitted or scaley appearance, sometimes greyish. You want something smooth and shiney.
One of the things I've learned though experience, is the importance of the proper heating power. Some places will tell you 'use a low wattage iron' to avoid overheating. Well, this is bullshit. If you use an iron that is too wimpy, like those cheap $5 radio shack ones, the joint isn't heated up quickly enough, but the heat has time travel away to the components while you're sitting there with the iron on the joint for 30 seconds wondering when the solder is going to melt. The best irons are the ones with adjustable settings and a trigger, a 'soldering gun'.
- remember when soldering that while solder provides some physical strength, in electronics that is not its main purpose. Any wires that are under strain should not depend entirely on solder to keep them together. Use some sort of strain relief when called for.
I hope this has been helpful.
Get an extension cable (Score:1)
BUT, once you've had it fixed, spend $5 on a USB extension cable (male on one end, female on the other) and plug your drive in through that instead of directly into the computer. This saves the drive from getting bumped around while it's plugged in, and weakening the solder again. The drive moves, but the connector doesn't, and the solder gets all of that force. The connect
Re:Work for Google! (Score:1)
http://www.jobs-junction.com/smf/index.php/topic,
Looks like it.
Re:Work for Google! (Score:1)
Re:DON'Ts (Score:1, Funny)
Heck, no. You'll need at least a 45-watt soldering iron with a nice, fat tip.
I suppose you could buy a soldering station with an isolated tip for $150 bucks or so. But with a little practice and a cardboard shield with a cutout, you can use that 45-watt iron to gently flick the solder in the general direction of the broken circuit trace.
Re:DON'Ts (Score:3, Funny)
Re:DON'Ts (Score:2, Funny)
Re:DON'Ts (Score:1)
I was using my mother's wood-burning iron (for art) and acid core solder. I'm better now with the right tools [reresource.org]
Re:DON'Ts (Score:1)
The same unit is offered elsewhere for as low as $30, unbranded.
Re:DON'Ts (Score:2)
Re:DON'Ts (Score:3, Funny)
Re:3 iPod minis? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:3 iPod minis? (Score:1)
6.1 surround sound baby!
BRe:Here's a funny story... (Score:2)