Ergodox assembly questions from newbie

[n0f3]

Hello geekhack,
I bought a ergodox drop way back from massdrop and finally got around to start some soldering on it. I'm afraid I may have messed up a few of the SMDs while soldering and actually had a couple of the pads that are present on the board come off due to the iron being too hot (this was my fault). I also found that in my lack of knowledge quite a few of the SMDs have been soldered on with the wrong polarity.

My question to you guys is the following: would it make sense for me to desolder all the current SMDs and start from zero on the other side of the PCB? Would that make the keyboard still work no problem?

Thanks,

[Binge]

Hello geekhack,
I bought a ergodox drop way back from massdrop and finally got around to start some soldering on it. I'm afraid I may have messed up a few of the SMDs while soldering and actually had a couple of the pads that are present on the board come off due to the iron being too hot (this was my fault). I also found that in my lack of knowledge quite a few of the SMDs have been soldered on with the wrong polarity.

My question to you guys is the following: would it make sense for me to desolder all the current SMDs and start from zero on the other side of the PCB? Would that make the keyboard still work no problem?

Thanks,

Tough choice, if you did damage to the PCB that is definitely an option, but just consider that you may harm your SMD components by continuously applying heat.  This is a little worse than I think I read in the PM, did you get any through-hole diodes?

[alinh]

Hello geekhack,
I bought a ergodox drop way back from massdrop and finally got around to start some soldering on it. I'm afraid I may have messed up a few of the SMDs while soldering and actually had a couple of the pads that are present on the board come off due to the iron being too hot (this was my fault). I also found that in my lack of knowledge quite a few of the SMDs have been soldered on with the wrong polarity.

My question to you guys is the following: would it make sense for me to desolder all the current SMDs and start from zero on the other side of the PCB? Would that make the keyboard still work no problem?

Thanks,

If you don't care about aesthetics you can even do a mix of SMD and through-hole diodes. No point in desoldering the correct SMDs, just the ones that have the wrong polarity and solder through-hole ones on the other side.

[tp4tissue]

You don't have to do that

There are 2 sets of pads on the back

the one right above the -regular spot-  is the same, you can solder it there.

[OldDataHands]

You could also just pick up some new PCBs from:
http://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=537
and some replacement diodes from digikey.com and be able to start fresh
now that you are a pro.

You could also do some simple hacks like putting the SMD diodes across
the through-hole pads, maybe with some bits of wire to aid in the soldering...
It just needs to be low-profile enough to not interfere with the case.