global Laptop and motherboard repair tutorial | Page 77

You will find that if you move the solder gun tip and the braid back and forth on the contact pad/land
of the solder joint… you can damage the land or ―ripǁ it off. So it is best to hold the solder gun tip
steady and not ―grindǁ it into the area needing de-soldering. If you find that the soldering gun tip
doesn’t seem to be pulling the solder, you might have too much flux in use or you might need to TIN
your soldering gun tip to freshen it. Let me make another point here on soldering, about how you hold
and use the soldering gun.
When soldering, you do not hold the soldering gun pointing straight at the part/component being
soldered. You will not pass the heat if you are touching just the very tip of the gun… You need to use
the soldering gun at a slight angle. You are to be using the very tip of the tip, but using the side of the
tip, not the top of the tip… and use light pressure. If you find yourself needing to press hard to melt
the solder, you either are not using a hot enough soldering gun, or the tip needs to be tinned, or you
need to clean your area being soldered and remove all old flux.
Continuing on, the de-soldering and removal of other components such as certain Voltage
regulators or other large IC chips that have a lot of ―armsǁ coming off of them to the motherboard as
they will use a different de-soldering process. To de-solder a component like mentioned, you start the
procedure by applying flux paste across all of the arms where they meet the motherboard. Then if you
are right handed, you will flip the motherboard to allow you to de-solder the right side of the chip
from the top down to the bottom. You do one side at a time, flipping the board as you go so that you
are always working top to bottom… as opposed to soldering horizontally.
Once you’ve fluxed the arms, you will apply the de-soldering braid to the top most arm of the IC
to start. You want the de-soldering braid to line up parallel with the line of IC chip arms because as
you heat the solder joint on the top arm of the row, you will take that to melting point and you will see
the solder on that contact pad liquefy and soak into the de-soldering braid. Wait about 1 ½ seconds
then you will slowly drag the de-soldering braid and the solder gun tip down the line of arms to pull
the solder away. Do not apply a lot of pressure, but apply enough to soak the braid. You will see that
if you go slower; it will pull all the necessary solder from the contact pad/arms. You do not want to
remove all traces of solder though because the chances of you ripping the contact pad are great being
how fragile they are.
So you make one pass down the row, spin the motherboard, continue to the next side and row until all
4 sides are done.
If you will be removing the IC chip in question, you will need a Chip Puller… A Chip Puller will
apply a small suction cup like device to the chip and allow you to pull upward while heating the IC
arms to free them from the contact pads and pull the chip from the motherboard… A Heat gun can
help you finish this process by heating all the arms simultaneously. If a chip puller is not obtainable,
you will have to use a very thin and long metal pick.
You will gently wedge the point of the pick between the IC chip being de-soldered and the
motherboard at the corner. You do it at the corner because there are no arms protruding from the
corners and you have room to place the pick without touching the arms (hopefully). You will pry
upward on the chips corner while using the soldering gun to heat the arms of the IC chip. You will be
holding the solder gun a little differently here though. Since you need to heat more of an area at the
same time, you will want to start heating from the top most pin, just like before…
And slowly move down (remember to pry upward gently on the IC as you go). Now you will also
want to apply flux to the top row of the IC chip, this way you can heat the side row and quickly jump
up to the top row heating that too. Eventually the chip will rise from the contact pads. Do not pry too
hard as to rip the arms from the pads. Go slow… and it will loosen. You want to alternate from the