[Marcio Teixeira] necessary to recap an old Apple Macintosh motherboard, and came across a uncomplicated hack to use frequent paper staples as a short-term heat defend (video, embedded down below) during hot air rework. The issue with incredibly hot air rework is minimising collateral harm, you are wielding air at a temperature very hot enough to soften solder, and it can be consider very a large amount of working experience to determine out how very best to safeguard the a lot more delicate areas from being broken. Larger sized things just take more time to heat because of to their ‘thermal mass’ but lesser parts can be extremely swiftly damaged from surplus warmth, while hoping to take out a nearby goal.
The sharp edges of plastic connectors are especially vulnerable, and very good security is paramount. Sticky tapes created from polyimide (Kapton,) PET, as properly as metallic options (aluminium tape is valuable) are normally employed to quickly mask off regions in threat of having this sort of collateral overheat. But, they can trigger other challenges. Kapton tape, whilst great at withstanding the heat, tends to distort and buckle up a little when underneath the blast of the rework pencil, and that can make it a very little irritating to operate with at instances, not to point out some manufacturers of tape depart a awful sticky transfer residue all more than the board when exposed to heat, which needs further cleanup.
Perhaps a box or two of staples may well be worthy of incorporating to one’s bag of tricks, after all additional options is constantly superior.
If you’re fewer appealing in hacking with a hot air work station and considerably far more in hacking a hot air rework station, in this article you go, and even though we’re on transforming duff personal computers, here’s what comes about when a Hackaday writer tries his hand at fixing his son’s Xbox.