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So guys...can I do this with a chisel tip? The same Soldering Iron I linked you, that you said would work, is a chisel tip....it arrived today...am I outta luck? No money to buy another tip or something.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00018 ... os_product

Confusing picture and description

Constructed to be high-quality and lightweight, this mini-pencil tool

The chisel tip should be fine. For dealing with small components just use the corner of the chisel.

I'm not able to do this. The second the solder hits the soldering iron, it kinda jumps away...

and the solder keeps sticking to the soldering iron, even though I tinned it.


Also, the area around the joint has taken on a slightly darker tinge. I worry heat damage. However the joint sticks slightly with a small ball of black solder. I let the Iron heat up for about 10 minutes, wasn't sure if it was too hot or too cold. I dunno if it still works, because I don' wanna plug it in until I do this.

I tried connection it and it lights up, but Windows detects it as an unknown device...

I imagine I killed it, pretty much?

Wiggling it around, I managed to get Windows to recognize it...I am really not qualified for soldering lol....But if I Let go, it stops instantly. Wonder if that still means there is hope?


Thing is, USB connector is as flush against the PCB as it can be..the two joints are not perfect, but they hold it in place... what should I I do?

Apply heat to the joint and apply the solder to the point where the iron and the joint meet, not just to the iron. See if that helps. If the solder isn't sticking to the connector and PCB, you haven't gotten the connector hot enough. The discoloration *might* just be rosin flux from the solder (in which case it is nothing to worry about).

If there's a lot of excess solder already present, clean that off with the solder wick first before trying again.

It's possible one of the data lines is damaged as well, from when the connector originally came loose. If you have the capability to post a high-res picture of the part of the connector where the finer (data) connections are soldered to the board, we may be able to give further advice. But if those are damaged a DIY repair may indeed be beyond the abilities of a soldering novice...

Thing is, the "joint" is the PCB and I freak out the second I see smoke when I press it down. I also do not have the greatest dexterity. I asked my father for help as well, as he's a welder(I know, very different, but he claims good dexterity). Just was having trouble.

Salvagable?

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/733/msc8.jpg (Warning: Large)

This is about the best picture I could take.

Clean it up (solder wick will help) and try again. The yellow stuff is rosin flux from the core of the solder.

The traces look pretty shot...I'm betting they're lifted from the pads and that's why you have to monkey it to get it to connect.

Yeah, it looks like the contact pads are entirely gone, I don't see any shiny metal copper around the through holes, just bare fiberglass board. It is still salvageable, but you'll want the help of someone experienced. You'll have to expose some of the copper trace and then get a connection to that. I hope this board wasn't still under warranty...

It's salvageable, but needs an Xacto knife and some tinned copper bus wire to do the job.

I've got no professional to do this, and I don't know what you mean about exposing something. I guess those things broke off, though I found them and put them to the side One side still has most of it's.

Seriously though, the cost of all this equipment, cable, and if I needed to find someone to do this? I.e, pay them? It'd have been cheaper to buy a new one.

And no, I said right at the start, that it was not under warranty, hence why I did this. As for that picture, it's with my sloppy soldering.

Though if it helps, I do have Copper Wire & Tin Wire from a speaker install. Got the Tin wire by accident. I could strip it, if I need such a thing.

Two pictures of the Solder that fell off:

http://imageshack.us/a/img802/3497/1qmh.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img30/2718/2exo.jpg

Er, guys, can you please answer my post?

Your first picture link did not initially work for me, but I figured out what you must have meant to type from the links to later two pictures. I see what you mean now, and think your next step is to see how bad things are now. If you plug the keyboard in, and be very gentle doing this, does it work at all?

Although I have not seen a circuit diagram for the keyboard, a guess is that the two solder-pads you worked on, which connect to the outer shell of the USB connector, are both grounds, and are connected together by that pretty fat trace between them. If the USB signal/data pins are still good, i.e., if the keyboard works at all, you may be able to salvage the keyboard.

I talked about hot it works if I press it weirdlyy and plug it in, as well as the other picture I uploaded shos the bad solder job. It should work, worked for others. What they are talking about though, I just don't know.

Basically, it looks like the copper trace "pads" have torn right off the PCB, so simply trying to resolder them won't do the trick. You need to identify the trace upstream of the break point, gently scrape the solder mask away to expose bare copper, then run a wire from there to the busted pad.

This is a pretty common failure on jacks that are subject to a lot of mechanical use or abuse. Back in the days before everything had a Li-Ion battery and USB charging port, us solder monkeys used to do this repair to everything after a year or two -- computer peripherals, portable CD players, the works. However, your chisel-tip soldering iron is probably the wrong size and type for a delicate soldering job.

By any chance are you located near Colorado?

No, I live in New Hampshire. I can remove the solder I put on with the wick I got, and then expose the two little things sticking out, yeah. But I don't know anything about scraping something away...the only thing to scrap, is the PCB, which I don't believe is a good idea...and the two little stubs coming through the PCB - however, those are so small that scraping them is literally not an option. So I don't know what I would scrape.

Difficult to tell from the pic, but it looks to me as if the solder joints for the data pins (the cluster of 5 connections just above the tabs you were trying to solder) may be damaged (cracked) as well. If you can re-flow those it may get the keyboard working again. Any way you can get a closeup pic of the cluster of 5 pins, taken from a shallow angle?

With the copper pads for the connector housing's tabs gone, the connector will not have much mechanical strength. Assuming you get it working, you really need to rig some sort of mechanical strain relief like what is pictured earlier in this thread.

just brew it! wrote:

much mechanical strength

I must confess that my very first thought, before I found this forum, was to just goop-up the whole connector area with some hard-drying glue, even if that would have meant permanently gluing in the usb cable. In my case, only the outer ground connections had broken free, and if I held the connector in place, the keyboard worked fine.

Given where this particular repair job is now, I submit that getting a good ground and mechanically fastening down the connector (perhaps after reflowing the data pins) might not be as bad/ridiculous as it sounds. Then again, I find the "brain surgery" tips from the experts fascinating.

The 5-pin cluster should also include a ground. Not having the connector body grounded my affect shielding/EMI somewhat, but this is (presumably) only USB 1.1 speeds we're talking about here so that is probably non-critical. The cable's internal shield (if any... IIRC USB 1.1 doesn't require it)) will still be grounded at the PC end anyhow.

My main concern with using glue/adhesive is that it may get inside the connector and foul the contacts.