Help with magic smoke incident / SMD (de)soldering

Discussion
1

Hello friends,

I made a stupid polarity mistake and managed to burn out a MC34063A voltage regulator on a controller board for an element of an installation I’m making for EMF.

I have no SMD soldering experience, how easy or hard would it be to try and replace a SOIC-8 IC with kit that we have in the space?

And is anyone willing to help showing me how to do this? (happy to buy you some pizza/beer)

Thanks,
Alex

2

@electrotechs

3

If you come on Thursday evening, @mia will probably be able to help you

4

Super do-able, no fear at all. Use the hot-air station, remove the old chip, clean up the pads with flux and some wick, new flux, re-tin the pads (soldering iron), add more flux, hold chip in position and hot-air it until it is in position. It is seriously much more difficult to mess up reflowing than real solder work (imho). Also re-flowing is so satisfying to do and look at!

My recommendation: Don’t use lead-free solder.

If you don’t want to do it alone first time, when do you plan to go to the space? Happy to show you.

5

Heya, I’ll be around this week to help if you like, but I won’t be in for Electronics Evening on Thursday this week. Note that we generally discourage using leaded solder unless your board already uses it. The Weller solder (light blue spool) is lead-free and works great :blush:.

6

thanks folks, let me first try to buy the replacement component and then I’ll ping you again to see when one of you might be available

7

I’m also happy to do the replacement. Better to ask for help if unsure to avoid damaging the board (eg lifting traces).

But I doubt “stupid polarity mistake”, expertise often comes from learning through mistakes.

According to Niels Bohr; expertise is related to the number of mistakes made in a narrow field! We must all be experts :wink:

8

I’ll be able to pick up the replacement IC tomorrow morning, any chance one of you is in the space tomorrow after working hours @maji @mia @Geraetefreund ?

(no worries if not, we can find another time)

9

Hi Alex,

I won’t be able to come in tomorrow evening. Saturday, Sunday any good?

10

Heya, I’ll be around tonight :slightly_smiling_face:

11

thanks, I’ll DM you!