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sudo Sergeant 21: 3D Desoldering a Raspberry Pi A+

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sudo Sergeant
The Learning Circuit
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Felix does something different and focuses on hardware.  He field strips the Raspberry Pi A+ by removing the GPIO, USB port, MIPI camera interface (CSI) connector, HDMI, and  composite video, leaving the power and SD slot in place.  If you don't have a lot of space, where do you want to slim down the Raspberry Pi to keep things really compact? Soldering overflow pins gets them flowing to get ready for the solder sucker.  If you have a different method of field stripping a Raspberry Pi, or you want to see another device field stripped, let us know in the comments below!   

  • in reply to koudelad

    Ben had an interesting little inexpensive desoldering pump that he used in a video a while back (the Vectrex, maybe?). Newark has them for about $40, so it's well within the range of the home gamer, I think.

  • There is also a ChipQuik low temperature melting point alloy that can be added to existing joints and provides the user longer time for desoldering, before the alloy gets solid again. Haven't tried that personally, but there is a lot of videos on Youtube.

  • Felix,

     

    Rule number one in desoldering is "Add flux". That is why all your desoldering work in the video feels so sticky. When you melt solder (new joint or adding to an existing joint), the flux degrades and is no longer usable. In order to redo any solder joint, flux needs to be added.

     

    I also have the feeling that 90 % of the amateurs don't have a desoldering station with a vacuum pump. If you only have a soldering iron, adding more solder (and flux) and heating all the pins at once is usually the only option. Small components can be desoldered one lead at a time (through hole components) or heating the whole component (surface mounted resistors, capacitors etc.) with the soldering iron. Manual pumps and desoldering braids are cheap and help a lot, but can't solve all the situations.

     

    Hot air gun (with appropriate nozzle) is a great help for most of the surface mounted components.

     

    Some inspiration can be found in Louis Rossmann's videos repairing Apple products.

     

    David