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Repairing motherboard trace and slot damage

Joined
Jul 29, 2022
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I tried soldering with a bridge wire tonight but I cannot get the solder to stick to one trace only - it keeps bridging traces no matter what I do. I'm using the smallest soldering tip I have - see the photos - and I'm not sure a smaller tip is practical. Is there some strategy for soldering I'm not considering?
Are you using flux? Have you cleaned the traces with alcohol first?
At this small size, you don't even need to put much solder on the iron. Just whatever residue is left on it after you wipe the solder off. That should be sufficient.

Personally I use a chisel tip for soldering, the pointy edge of the chisel tip can make for far better pinpoint accuracy than the regular "pen" shaped tip, and conducts heat better due to its mass. If you have a iron, you won't need to turn up the heat very high, I can solder comfortably at below 300C. My secondary soldering iron is a crappier chinese all-in-one (that "yeehaw" heatgun + iron set) and doesn't conduct heat as good and I have to turn up the temperature, and it ends up not making proper contact and burning stuff everywhere, it's not any good.

But, I think those traces are just too close together. Perhaps you can put some Kapton tape on one trace to prevent solder sticking to it. But at that distance, I don't think it will help either (the board itself would transfer the heat from underneath the tape).

Maybe try using conductive ink, but those have far larger tips, so you'd need to tape down the entire area around each trace you repair (and hope that the tape won't lift the ink off once you are on the other traces, the ink takes something like an hour to set).

This is not an easy repair job.
 
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Are you using flux? Have you cleaned the traces with alcohol first?
At this small size, you don't even need to put much solder on the iron. Just whatever residue is left on it after you wipe the solder off. That should be sufficient.

Personally I use a chisel tip for soldering, the pointy edge of the chisel tip can make for far better pinpoint accuracy than the regular "pen" shaped tip, and conducts heat better due to its mass. If you have a iron, you won't need to turn up the heat very high, I can solder comfortably at below 300C. My secondary soldering iron is a crappier chinese all-in-one (that "yeehaw" heatgun + iron set) and doesn't conduct heat as good and I have to turn up the temperature, and it ends up not making proper contact and burning stuff everywhere, it's not any good.

But, I think those traces are just too close together. Perhaps you can put some Kapton tape on one trace to prevent solder sticking to it. But at that distance, I don't think it will help either (the board itself would transfer the heat from underneath the tape).

Maybe try using conductive ink, but those have far larger tips, so you'd need to tape down the entire area around each trace you repair (and hope that the tape won't lift the ink off once you are on the other traces, the ink takes something like an hour to set).

This is not an easy repair job.

It's easy for me as am used to this kind of work. I can cut traces on a non working motherboard to show how it's done. A chisel tip will generate more heat but accuracy will drop. Let's see if I can find something dead with traces very near to each other to show how it's done. ...I don't like doing this as I have to move things around to gain access to the workstation, but lets see if I can prove how easy it is to do.

Oh, & by the way I use solder paste for most my work, but I will use normal solder from a reel to simulate what most users have including flux if needed.

EDIT: I will take photos of each stage as I go.



EDIT2: @OP

I forgot to add. If you continue to make mistakes, you will lift the track. This is why it's important to get lots of practice in on dead thing you do not care about.


EDIT3: Adding photos of before & after. This will be a rough rushed repair as I don't have to time, so don't expect anything fantastic. I will now make a mess trying to get to the workstation.


EDIT4: Sorry guys too much work to gain access to workstation. Will carry out repair tomorrow to show how it's done.
 

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eidairaman1

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Use flux to prevent bridging
 
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