Best tools to desolder DC Jack?

[brandonkick]

On the last two DC jack repairs i've attempted, I royally screwed up the operations and have had to replace the motherboards. My soldering iron, although small, doesn't seem small enough, and the desoldering iron's head is much too large. Can anyone recommend links to the best tools to perform electrical resoldering work? I don't want to spend over $50 total. Should I just use the smallest soldering iron I can find and a braid? Get a smaller desoldering gun? Any advice would be appreciated, as I'm about to run myself out of business with my fudge-ups.

Should have read this more carefully. Although I won't be as blunt, I'll offer the same advice: You should probably stop repairing DC jacks. You need more equipment to do this properly and the $50 won't get you there. I'd say a better ball park would be $200.

I think there was an Aoyue station listed on the forums a bit ago that did hot air, desoldering, soldering and had a suction to suck up the fumes. It was around $150 and worth every penny. You'd need something like that IMO if you wanted to do a lot of jacks and wanted to give yourself a fair shot at doing them right.

You need to be careful that you heat only the legs of the jack, that you get most if not all of the old solder off the board and that you don't heat ANYTHING any longer then it needs to be heated.

Buy the proper tools and practice on those junk boards that you ruined if you really want to start doing this service the right way (and earn money doing it)

 

[MobileTechie]

At the end of the day, if you've got the time, all you need is a powerful enough iron, a desoldering pump, cutters, solder, flux and braid.

I don't know if you can get all that for $50 in the US.

 

[LifelineIT]

I do a fair amount of soldering work for being as small an operation as I am. I also do a lot of hobby electronics---like I built a big LED array for my hydroponic hot peppers, and I have a 72v electric scooter, I do some arduino stuff with a fathers group I work with, etc. Someday I'll get a hot air station. I've spent the last 5 years burning through cheap irons, and I finally found one I like.

This Weller from Lowes is a really nice piece. It heats up almost as fast as the DC jobbies, it cools down super fast, and it doesn't require a stand. The light doesn't hurt either. It also accepts a variety of replacement tips, the easiest ones I think are 2 for $8 at Lowes as well. It's equal to about a 60w iron, but it only uses like 12 watts or something. Anyway, once the tip is tinned...you're set.

That iron, some ebay braid, a tub of flux, and some 00 silver rosin core solder and there is very, very little you can't do, total price maybe $60 depending on where you buy your flux and how much solder you buy.

 

[NYJimbo]

That iron, some ebay braid, a tub of flux, and some 00 silver rosin core solder and there is very, very little you can't do, total price maybe $60 depending on where you buy your flux and how much solder you buy.

Go find yourself an old Dell laptop motherboard with the standard 9 pin jack and remove it (without causing any damage to the board) using that iron and let us know how it goes.

 

[LifelineIT]

Like this?

I've done several? I learned to solder back in the PS1 mod chip days with a pencil iron, if you could do those bastards, you can do just about anything. I've also got a sexy little surface-mount holddown jig I made that helps too...