Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

[Spider1211]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

True, and they aint cheap either. The fake chinese replacement ones are of pretty bad quality made with brittle plastic!

But then again, you could replace the handle with the FX9501. Which is what the KSGER handle design is based on if am not mistaken.

[stj]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

the real hakko unit also has a 2part handle that has clips that are known to break.
hakko dont care - they consider the lower part to be a "consumable" and sell them in multiple colours.

[Spider1211]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

As per its specs the Fx600 is only 50W. It would still struggle with big copper planes. The disadvantage (in my opinion) is its use of T18 tips which means you have to wait for the iron to cool down before you changing. Additionally if the heating element fails, you have a downtime until you get a replacement.

The FX951 as mentioned be stj is quite good (and also the one I use). The use if T12 tips means its hot swappable, therefore no need to wait for cool down to change tip. It is higher power and no down time (provided you have more than 1 tip ofcourse) if heating element fails since each tip/cartridge comes as a complete unit. The thing I do not like about it is you need genuine hakko T12 since the unit is very "picky". Using non-genuine tips is a more of a "lucky" process (I only have 1 out of 12 non-genuine T12 that works with my unit).

KSGER provides thermal properties of the hakko but also works with most T12 tips out there which are way cheaper than genuine hakko ones.

[stj]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

looks like shit designed for schools - same tips as the junk 900m and 808d irons

[Eh546]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

what is FX600???
i know FX951

https://www.hakko.com/english/products/hakko_fx600.html

[stj]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

what is FX600???
i know FX951

[Eh546]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

Hesitating between a KSGR T12 or Hakko FX600 iron.

[mmartell]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

Well that explains it right there...

[Eh546]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

You still have not mentioned what brand of soldering hand-piece you are using, not all 60watt hand-piece's are the same.

Chinese junk from this kit with a bevel tip.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Deusjevoo]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

You still have not mentioned what brand of soldering hand-piece you are using, not all 60watt hand-piece's are the same.

Well, at least we know it goes up to 450c... ;-)

[llonen]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

You still have not mentioned what brand of soldering hand-piece you are using, not all 60watt hand-piece's are the same.

[Eh546]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

Does not matter if its leaded or unleaded. When there is a big plane that sucks away heat quickly it is essential to preheat the board (irrespective of type of solder).

You could be struggling to remove the solder because of a few things but the most common would be:

1. Heat hasn't yet properly conducted to the further end of the joint. When this happens and you try to unsolder, the top part of the solder will easily be removed but some will remain at the further end. Soldering iron with good thermal recovery (such as KSGER as mentioned by dicky96) usually mitigate that.

2. This is most common with through hole. When the leads of the components contact the side wall of the solder hole, it creates a slight capillary effect which holds back some solder. One way to solve that is to try to move the leads away from the side wall using the iron when desoldering (to avoid ripping the plating on the side wall) and use a big solder sucker (the small ones usually don't have enough suction power) to suck up the solder. Or ideally you would use a desoldering gun, but those are a bit pricey and would be mostly used when there is a lot of desoldering to do (such as connector terminal on car ECU, etc).

if you use a solder sucker, put a cm of heat proof rubber tube over the end - it will work much better

Alright i'll try that, thanks for the advises.

Unless you mentioned and I missed it, you don't say what soldering iron your using. That is a lot of thermal mass your trying to work with there.

It's a 60w iron, but i won't work on that xbox360 board anymore, or until i have a heatgun.

I think i will be able to recap the monitor power board that i talked earlier, i'm just waiting for the caps to arrive.

So here's some pic of the diy kit i practiced on, far left ones on the first are very ugly because i thought i needed to bend the leads way apart for the components to hold on to the board.

I'm also missing a 2.2nf 50v ceramic radial capacitor from the kit that go in C2, i'll probably order from aliexpress or digikey.

[llonen]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

Unless you mentioned and I missed it, you don't say what soldering iron your using. That is a lot of thermal mass your trying to work with there.

[stj]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

if you use a solder sucker, put a cm of heat proof rubber tube over the end - it will work much better

[Spider1211]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

Does not matter if its leaded or unleaded. When there is a big plane that sucks away heat quickly it is essential to preheat the board (irrespective of type of solder).

You could be struggling to remove the solder because of a few things but the most common would be:

1. Heat hasn't yet properly conducted to the further end of the joint. When this happens and you try to unsolder, the top part of the solder will easily be removed but some will remain at the further end. Soldering iron with good thermal recovery (such as KSGER as mentioned by dicky96) usually mitigate that.

2. This is most common with through hole. When the leads of the components contact the side wall of the solder hole, it creates a slight capillary effect which holds back some solder. One way to solve that is to try to move the leads away from the side wall using the iron when desoldering (to avoid ripping the plating on the side wall) and use a big solder sucker (the small ones usually don't have enough suction power) to suck up the solder. Or ideally you would use a desoldering gun, but those are a bit pricey and would be mostly used when there is a lot of desoldering to do (such as connector terminal on car ECU, etc).

[Eh546]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

I can't really add much to what the other guys said. Preheat the PCB for sure. I often give the whole area a quick warm with my hot air for 10-20 secs then grab the soldering iron and get to work. I may have to repeat this sequence several times depending on the job. Sometimes I have been known to hold the hot air in one hand and the soldering iron in the other and use them simultaneously

Flux as mentioned, 100% necessary. Dip your solder wick in it

Even given all the above, I wasn't having a lot of luck with motherboards, and that is with decades of soldering experience, until I got a T12 soldering Iron. I have the KSGER and mostly use a BC3 tip for this sort of work.

The T12 is the one single thing that took this from a difficult job to as easy as it looks on youtube. And they are not expensive. I normally have mine set to 320C, but on particularly stubborn components I just hit the control knob and it goes straight to boost temperature, 370C. I seriously can't recommend one of these enough.

Heating the boards seems to be essential for non leaded solder, for the T12
i might just pick one up, seems to be pretty good and not that expensive.
I practiced on a cheap diy kit off of amazon, the only part which i struggle is the removal of solder when it stuck in the hole, sometimes even with some fluxed wick with leaded iron, or applying more solder on it then try to suck it out doesn't work out, i might just grab a solder sucking gun.

[dicky96]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

I can't really add much to what the other guys said. Preheat the PCB for sure. I often give the whole area a quick warm with my hot air for 10-20 secs then grab the soldering iron and get to work. I may have to repeat this sequence several times depending on the job. Sometimes I have been known to hold the hot air in one hand and the soldering iron in the other and use them simultaneously

Flux as mentioned, 100% necessary. Dip your solder wick in it

Even given all the above, I wasn't having a lot of luck with motherboards, and that is with decades of soldering experience, until I got a T12 soldering Iron. I have the KSGER and mostly use a BC3 tip for this sort of work.

The T12 is the one single thing that took this from a difficult job to as easy as it looks on youtube. And they are not expensive. I normally have mine set to 320C, but on particularly stubborn components I just hit the control knob and it goes straight to boost temperature, 370C. I seriously can't recommend one of these enough.

[Eh546]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

I'll try to find some old junk to desolder that is hopefully not lead free. I also might order diy kits just for fun and soldering practice. Thanks for the suggestions guys.

[diif]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

Soldering new through hole components does not really give you any experience in removing components. As Spider1211 suggests, practice removing some components from some scrap boards instead.

[Spider1211]

Re: Beginner, practicing to unsolder on a lead free xbox 360 board, it is hell.

I'm thinking i should just practice on a diy kit like this beforehand to gain some experience and not mess the whole thing up lol.

Or just practice on some scrap PCB? Am sure you must have a few broken or unused electronics lying around! Plus they are free