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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: Reckthor on Thu, 19 September 2013, 22:09:30

Title: Ok so I broke it............What now
Post by: Reckthor on Thu, 19 September 2013, 22:09:30

Ok so im pulling apart my QFR and I put alittle to much forcwe in to getting the last tab off. Pulled way to hard on the connecter and well yeah

So yeah.........Anyone know if this can be fixed. From what i see i have ripped the solder joints out .

Title: Re: Ok so I broke it............What now
Post by: Reckthor on Thu, 19 September 2013, 22:13:51

yeah....

Title: Re: Ok so I broke it............What now
Post by: 0100010 on Thu, 19 September 2013, 22:35:03

It can be fixed, but it would be delicate work.  One trace at a time I would remove about 1mm of coating, run some very thin and short wire jumper back to the connector then flux and solder.  Would also need some additional bonding between the connector housing and the PCB to help hold it in place.

Title: Re: Ok so I broke it............What now
Post by: dorkvader on Fri, 20 September 2013, 02:09:21

This exact thing happened to my QFR, and I fixed it with some sires out of a broken USB cable, I sodlered from the connector to the corresponding pins nenar that area for ground and near the microcontroller for the data.

It's actually much easier to just solder from the usb subboard with new longer wires, but I wanted to preserve that connector for some reason.

Title: Re: Ok so I broke it............What now
Post by: terran5992 on Fri, 20 September 2013, 03:07:13

0.o gonna be hard to fix it D:

Title: Re: Ok so I broke it............What now
Post by: rowdy on Fri, 20 September 2013, 06:26:06

If you ask nicely, and depending on location, there might be a couple of members here who could fix it for you.

Title: Re: Ok so I broke it............What now
Post by: Hellmark on Fri, 20 September 2013, 11:52:02

It isn't really a hard fix, just a delicate one.

What I would do, is glue the piece back into place. Use your soldering iron to melt the solder there a bit, to each of the traces. BE VERY CAREFUL TO NOT SHORT BETWEEN TRACES. Next I would get some thin, sold, wire and solder from each point on the connector, to a spot further down the trace. You'll need to clean a bit of the coating off the PCB here.

Reason for the second part, is the connection where it meets the board will never be 100%, so we have to suppliment.

Title: Re: Ok so I broke it............What now
Post by: terran5992 on Sat, 21 September 2013, 00:17:10

Lesson to be learnt.

Dont use hercules strength to open your QFR