[BC] Magic hair...

[Jerry Mathis]

I've done it successfully using a de-soldering iron (an iron with a suction
bulb attached). There's just one potential problem: be SURE the tip is
intact, meaning smooth and flat. The tips on these tend to develop grooves
or channels, and the suction bulb draws air through them instead of through
the hole in the circuit board. Found this out the hard way.

The desoldering iron I use is available from the 'Shack for a reasonable
price. Get some replacement tips while you're there. BTW, the tips can be
filed down once, maybe twice, to fix them before you have to replace them.

Jerry Mathis


On 1/17/08, WFIFeng at aol.com <WFIFeng at aol.com> wrote:
>
> In a message dated 01/16/2008 11:37:33 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> biwa at earthlink.net writes:
>
> > The board's fan is running fine
> >  and the heat sink is clear.  But, for some reason the magic hair came
> >  out of 5 of the 10 filter capacitors.  So, let this be a lesson - Do
> >  not let the magic hair out of filter capacitors!
>
> That's because there was a flood of bad caps released into the marketplace
> a
> few years ago. This machine's MoBo suffered from a bunch of them, too.
> Since
> the board was already basically "dead", I decided to perform brain
> surgery, and
> replace them.
>
> First item of note: You cannot desolder them wihtout risking serious
> damage
> to the board, itself. Thus, the old ones must be *carefully* snipped-out,
> leaving the approx. 1/16" leads protruding. (That's about all of the lead
> length
> that isn't aluminum.) Soldering the replacement caps to those is tricky,
> but
> do-able, and I was able to pull it off. :) This machine has been running
> perfectly for over a year, now.
>
> It's delicate "surgery", not for the faint-of-heart, or less-skilled
> solderers, tho! ;)
>
> Willie...
>