#229

It’s a little expensive for what it is, but ChipQuick is really helpful for removing mistakes; it’s a metal compound with higher heat retention and a lower melting point. The intention is for using it to remove more expensive components that you want to reuse, but I don’t need that often, so I also use it for other silly mistakes. I soldered some header pins on the wrong side of a board, and I recently used it to get them free.

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#230

I recently got chipquick to do some SMT rework and it was very useful, but could still be tricky for someone with less rework experience.

for the LED matrices, brute force may be the safest solution - cut them out and extract the pins, take a dremel to the faces if you have to so you can get at the pins. Pull them out with tweezers and clear the holes with solder wick. Personally I’d rather replace the displays than a hard to replace PCB.

good luck!

#231

I politely disagree. I find ChipQuick to be quite easy to use: melt it on, get it quite hot, and then you can pull things away with a fair amount of ease. My main point of concern is that the brute force method can tear out the trace in the PCB - a thing I have done! You cannot fix that if it happens, and you’re more likely to do it with less experience. Again, just my two cents, but you can save the part and reduce risk of damage with ChipQuick.

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#232

@grey i second that emotion

#233

Brute force is no good in my opinion but sacrificing a part for protecting your PCB is a good Idea.
And you can repair burned away traces on a 2 layer board. Just replace them with a piece of wire. But you really don’t want to have to do that.