I want to make a midi keyboard out of some buttons, rather than buying more I was just going to take some off of old electronics, so I ripped out some boards and started heating up my soldering iron and got out my solder tap. My iron got pleny hot, but I could not melt the solder holding these buttons in. Do they generally put a film down to prevent the solder from melting or was my irons just not hot enough?

Note I am using a really crappy 30W soldering iron, my Pyropen is back in the gas house.

6/3/2006 8:15:08 PM

30w isn't much. For me, I have had various luck scavenging parts. I tried to get the power supply caps off of various motherboards with a very hot iron and eventually with a very hot air gun down in our lab, and those bitches are in there solid.

6/3/2006 8:18:28 PM

i've had a tough time with the first remelt so to speak on some electronics....seems like just really pushing the iron into it helped.

6/3/2006 8:25:03 PM

Yea, I find on bigger stuff, just mashing the iron into it will get it melted. Granted you will probably destroy the underlying PCB, but hey this is part scavenging, so who gives a shit right.

6/3/2006 8:37:40 PM

I always used a gun and a solder vacuum tool. Worked like a champ. Not great for fine work, but bigger stuff(caps, switches, etc.) was okay.

6/3/2006 9:08:00 PM

a high temp heatgun is a good tool for salvage, jsut slowly heat the whole board till stuff starts falling off.

6/3/2006 11:45:36 PM

^hahaha that's such a good idea, seriously. Ill bet thats fun as hell to watch

6/3/2006 11:50:25 PM

works well if you have a good heatgun, and a decent jig to hold the board. Great for what i work with at work, aka high volatage stuff, as a scr based drive is much mroe forgiving of me hating it up and solder running down the baord than say a logic baord would be. Thankfully the newer drives we use use bus bars and 1/4-20 bolts to mount the scr's, thus no solder desolder to try and rescue parts form a burned up drive.

6/4/2006 12:50:51 AM

jesus man

6/4/2006 2:24:34 AM

Quote :

"^hahaha that's such a good idea, seriously."

yea if you don't mind melting your chips

6/4/2006 7:35:15 AM

never said it was good for wokring with logic stuff or ic's. I am delaing with stuff that is part fo a drive for a 40-100 horse moter msot of the time, so it is pretty forgiving.

6/4/2006 10:33:56 AM

In some cases with commercial electronics, they use a different sort of solder that's cheaper, but harder to melt. The technique of just pushing the iron onto the solder really hard works pretty well. Sometimes rubbing the bit on the surface of the solder helps too. That little bit of friction can help heat it up. Also, just be patient with it. Move the bit around the surface some. Sometimes you'll find a particular little spot where the conduction is better and it'll melt better.

6/4/2006 10:54:15 AM

I tin the iron beforehand too, to get the best heat conductivity and area.

6/5/2006 1:57:21 AM

get a butane soldering iron. that sucker will melt anything

6/5/2006 7:48:00 AM

Or get a variable temperature iron. Its not like they're expensive, mine was $50 at Radio Shack and works great.

6/6/2006 12:22:27 PM

Yeah I have a weller pyropen back in the gas house, I hate using this 30W, but it's all I have in my toolbox here.

6/6/2006 12:26:41 PM