Help!, Customer cut the caps off!

[Pesti]

I'm ready to tear my hair out, honestly! I had a customer call me about his bad mobo, when he told me that there were a bunch off "little round barrels with
junk coming out" I gave him the news, with the basics. He asked what could be done and I explained that the bad ones had to come off, and replaced with better, new ones for a start. I shot him a really decent price for an unseen
board, and he said he would get back to me.....Well this AM he shows up at the shop with his board, and tells me he got it started for me, and omg! He had cut
every leaking cap off with flush cutters..........I'm fairly new at recapping but I've managed to do a half way decent job on most that I've done. but
now I'm lost. I told him that there was a good chance that it was beyond my
ability to fix the mess he made. He's asked me to try if I wanted, cuz he was probably gonna get a new board anyway. So just for practice and future help is there any way to get the damn things out. I have a Hakko 808 desoldering
gun that does a pretty decent job when the caps are intact. But no matter how much xtra solder I use I cant seem to get enough out of the through hole
and get the broken pins out any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[kc8adu]

Re: Help!, Customer cut the caps off!

preheat the board with heatgun.
use needle to push out lead and clear hole.
double repair bill for the customer trying and failing!
i see this on industrial stuff.owner tries to save money by "fixing" it himself.
fails and brings the abortion in to me.

[selldoor]

Re: Help!, Customer cut the caps off!

I would have thought the problem was what to put back in?
Is it a well documented board?

[Pesti]

Re: Help!, Customer cut the caps off!

Actually it's a low end am3 board, it had 10, tk caps in it, all leaking. I think he said it came out of an Emachine. (He brought the cut off caps with him, he said
in case he had cut off the wrong ones I could put them back on).......OMFG
I'll give The heat gun, needle thing a try, but the first board I ever worked on,
haq a knocked off cap and lets just say my waning patience got the better of me....lol
thx guys, Pesti

[kc8adu]

Re: Help!, Customer cut the caps off!

hopefully he did not cut/damage traces when cutting the caps off.
i often preheat stubborn boards before i desolder.sounds like you dont have a good enough iron if that board is giving you fits.
if you get lost post a pic.
i suspect its the generic ecs board so common in evilmachines.

[PeteS in CA]

Re: Help!, Customer cut the caps off!

Reminds me of a story in an old TV service magazine. The tech had fixed the problem, and then found that the set had to be totally aligned. When the customer saw the bill he complained, explaining that he had helped fix it by tightening all the loose screws inside ...

[ben7]

Re: Help!, Customer cut the caps off!

To get the pins out, I found that you can heat the solder, and use another wire to push the wire bits out of the hole.

-Ben

[momaka]

Re: Help!, Customer cut the caps off!

I got an old Pentium 4 ESC motherboard come to me like that with two ripped caps.

I used a heatgun to preheat the area of the ripped caps a bit (probably no more than 80C), then grabbed each cap lead with my wire cutters (from the backside, not the component side) and heat the lead with the soldering iron. When the solder around the cap lead melts, pull it with the wire cutters. Repeat for the others. Also, be careful to to squeeze too hard on the wire cutter handles cause that will likely cut the lead and will make it harder to remove with this method.

This worked fine for me even though I only used a 35W Radio Shack iron.

[JayArr_BC]

Re: Help!, Customer cut the caps off!

Spend a little time and build yourself a jig that will hold a board upright on your bench so that your right hand can heat one side of the board while your other hand works a set of pliers on the other side of the board. Being able to access both sides of the board and use both hands makes the job so much easier you'll wonder why you didn't do this sooner.

Jeff