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How Bad is this??


b0N3z

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I heard a snap putting on the antenna to wlan0 and yes I over tightened it a little much.  but the copper pad came off the board with the male side antenna connector.  Can the connector be soldered back on or is it a lost cause?

 

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If it was mine, I'd resolder it, and use a very fine strand as a jumper over the trace. If needed, a small xacto knife will remove the coating from the remaining trace. As long as the mounting pads (The ones that will suffer the most stress) are strong, and you don't make too much of a mess on the lifted pad, things could be fixed 100%. I'd also use some IPA to remove any flux around the repair. Flux, and especially impurities it might attract, can affect RF. The tricky parts will be to get it straight, and to solder it well, but quickly. High heat has a way of lifting pads.

After the repair, I'd carefully drill out the hole in the plastic so that the antenna doesn't stop at the plastic. That was one of the first mods I made, and have been very happy with it.

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5 hours ago, RChadwick said:

If it was mine, I'd resolder it, and use a very fine strand as a jumper over the trace. If needed, a small xacto knife will remove the coating from the remaining trace. As long as the mounting pads (The ones that will suffer the most stress) are strong, and you don't make too much of a mess on the lifted pad, things could be fixed 100%. I'd also use some IPA to remove any flux around the repair. Flux, and especially impurities it might attract, can affect RF. The tricky parts will be to get it straight, and to solder it well, but quickly. High heat has a way of lifting pads.

After the repair, I'd carefully drill out the hole in the plastic so that the antenna doesn't stop at the plastic. That was one of the first mods I made, and have been very happy with it.

yea too much heat and inexperience with a soldering iron killed the Nano. I thought I had it pretty good but It came off again and pulled another pad.  Live and learn and practice soldering on something else lol.  

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The photo is kind of fuzzy to see the real damage on the board. If the pad and trace was pulled up from the board it's going to be a bit of a mess. You can, in theory, use a jumper wire as mentioned above to jumper the connections to the proper trace. You will need some good quality soldering iron and solder, possibly a form of magnification, and small gauge wire. You most likely will need a fiberglass brush to expose the copper trace you need to solder to.

I have done fixing on USB thumb drives where the ports were ripped off. The hard part is the unknown potential damage that you cannot see.

I have a picture of one I repaired where I took a picture through a microscope to see the damage. I need to find it again :-/.

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Yea Idk what I want to do with it yet.  Im going to take some better pictures tonight or tomorrow.

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I found the picture. Took a while haha. But this is a picture I took with my smartphone camera through the lens of a microscope.

The centered USB pin is broken and you can see how it's broke on the top part of the soldering. Also the darker blue area that is next to the crack is a lifted trace.

Fun times. With this one, my co-worker and I were able to fiberglass brush and remove the blue coating to expose the trace and solder a small jumper wire and read from the device.

20151027_104435.jpg

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I use a combination of IR reworkstation and Hot air reflow station when repairing pcbs,
yes you can use small guage modding wire to reconnect, but it may be possible to repair
the pcb tracks themselves which I what I was talking about.

need a close up of the area of damage.

Edited by kerravon
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I have pictures for you either tonight or tomorrow. Been a bit busy lately and that has been on the back burner.

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