Removing video out ports of LCD controller board; Good Idea?

[NoTxtWhileDrive]

Not much electronic experience, so please bear with me.

 

 

One of the goals of my current project it to design a as small as possible case around this controller board and it's accompanying LCD screen. The hurdle I'm currently facing is that the case is too tall because of the clearance needed for to house the video and audio out ports in this board. My idea right now since I'm only really using hdmi and dc in why not shave a couple of millimeters by desoldering all the other ports except those two. I'm guessing it will still work after removing it, hope so at least... Could it be done on with only a cheap soldering iron, a heat gun and a solder sucker? with absolutely no other tool in regards to working with electronics at my disposal?

 

 

[gnomik]

It will work. It will be a pain in the ass tho. Also depends on your soldering skill. It will look like ass after,most likely

[GrayTech]

I don't have much experience as well but I can share my thoughts with you. The board should work fine without the ports you don't need. But to unsolder the ports you probably need something like an desoldering tool instead of the heatgun. But someone else should probably confirm what I just said before you start. 

[gnomik]

I know i would be able to remove them with a heatgun. But that is not usually a tool you use if you care about the board.

You need a good quality desoldering tool for double sided boards. Also solder wick is useful for this stuff.

[Fullmental]

I don't have a ton of experience soldering, but generally if you're careful and don't try to cut corners, it is doable. You just have to be sure not to accidentally damage any other solder joints or chips in the process. 

 

I'd recommend something like this soldering station and these desoldering tools as a bare minimum kit to do this sort of work. They're the same ones I keep around for occasional use (repairing video game cartridges, soldering wires together, and re-soldering oxidized joints on older tech). The desoldering pump can be more accurate if you're trying to work in a very tight spot compared to the wick, and generally I prefer using it.

 

As a general rule of thumb, never take a soldering iron to anything you can't afford to replace. Just in case the worst happens.

[Unimportant]

38 minutes ago, NoTxtWhileDrive said:

Could it be done on with only a cheap soldering iron, a heat gun and a solder sucker? with absolutely no other tool in regards to working with electronics at my disposal?

No, that's a multilayer board. Desoldering a single component with 2 pins would be possible with only basic tools, but a connector with many pins is nigh impossible without damaging the board.

 

If you don't care about the connectors afterwards, the poor-man's solution to this is to carefully cut/peel the connectors apart with very sharp side cutters, making sure never to put stress on the board. Once the bulk of the connectors plastic body has been removed this way you can desolder the individual pins one-by-one by pulling them while heating them from the other side.

 

That's the quick and dirty way we used to use to replace damaged ports on laptops, etc when our main tools were unavailable. In situations where the board is important but the connector itself is allowed to be destroyed.

[NoTxtWhileDrive]

35 minutes ago, Fullmental said:

As a general rule of thumb, never take a soldering iron to anything you can't afford to replace. Just in case the worst happens.

Luckily, due to a shipping error I was sent two of this controller board, So I'm covered for at least one failed attempt haha.

 

Something seems wrong with your second hyperlink... clicking it leads to nothing.

[Fullmental]

10 minutes ago, NoTxtWhileDrive said:

Luckily, due to a shipping error I was sent two of this controller board, So I'm covered for at least one failed attempt haha.

 

Something seems wrong with your second hyperlink... clicking it leads to nothing.

Hmm, it works fine when I click on it. You can search Amazon for "OMorc Desoldering Wick, Solder Sucker & Solder Braid"

 

[NoTxtWhileDrive]

38 minutes ago, Unimportant said:

If you don't care about the connectors afterwards, the poor-man's solution to this is to carefully cut/peel the connectors apart with very sharp side cutters, making sure never to put stress on the board. Once the bulk of the connectors plastic body has been removed this way you can desolder the individual pins one-by-one by pulling them while heating them from the other side.

That could actually work really well, the only hard part I can think of doing initially is the metal plates in front of the dvi/vga cable, but I think I can easily remove it by desoldering these points.

 

[mariushm]

No no no no ...

 

The motherboards have multiple layers full of copper which act as a heatsink sucking out all the heat quickly and moving it away. A cheap soldering iron won't have the energy to heat up the lead free solder enough to suck up the solder using a plain solder sucker.

 

In addition, bigger connectors like the vga and dvi connectors have those bigger pins on the sides,  which are kind of like clips, they have a bit of spring to them and separate ... so you have to suck up all that solder and then use pliers or something to squeeze them. Only then you'd have to handle the individual pins

 

here's how it looks:

 

 

To remove or replace just a capacitor, it's possible to use a cheaper soldering station with a bit of help.  LIQUID FLUX will help a lot ... even if the solder you have says it has flux inside, adding a few drops of flux really does help substantially.

 

Get a heat gun or a paint stripping gun or a good hair dryer and heat the bottom of the board to around 80 C (hold whatever you use a bit of distance away from the board) - don't go over or you may start to melt plastics on the other side.

now that the board is warm in that area ... apply some liquid flux over the joints you want to desolder.. the flux will be activated by the heat on the board, or when you bring the soldering iron tip to it, and the flux will act like an acid corroding the layers of oxides over the solder of the joints which would otherwise act as a block, preventing heat from the iron to go into the solder.

You can use  even a cheaper soldering gun or a proper soldering station and ADD some LEADED solder to the joints you want to desolder. The leaded solder melts at 180-183c instead of 217c or more for lead free solder, so by adding leaded solder you reduce the melting temperature of the existing solder so your soldering iron / gun / station doesn't have to pump so much eat into the leads and by consequence into all the copper layers of the motherboard.

Now add solder to the other joint and then constantly flip between heating each pin of the capacitor (or whatever) or if the tip is flat and large enough, heat both joints at same time until both joints are flowing, the solder is visible melting... now you can simply pull out the capacitor leads from the other side.

 

If the holes get filled with some of this solder, then you can find some syringe needle or STAINLESS STEEL sewing needle - solder will not stick to stainless steel - and you can again heat up the solder over that hole (add more solder if needed)  and once the solder is liquid you can quickly push the needle in the hole and the solder will be pushed out and won't stick to stainless steel like I said.

 

Now you can put the new part.

 

With those big connectors like DVI and VGA you won't be able to use a cheap soldering gun (one of those you plug directly in the mains), you'll need a proper soldering station which can monitor the tip temperature where you want it.  You'll still need some extra heat to keep the board warm.

So after sucking the solder on those bigger clips on the sides... what I would basically do is wet all the pins with liquid flux and then flood the pins with leaded solder basically make a big blob of solder connecting ALL the pins together in a big blob of solder.

Heat up this blob with the soldering station (you need to have a quality one that would be able to pump heat into such a big area) and then pull the connector from the other side, and squeezing those clips if needed.

 

 

 

 

[gnomik]

54 minutes ago, mariushm said:

No no no no ...

 

The motherboards have multiple layers full of copper which act as a heatsink sucking out all the heat quickly and moving it away. A cheap soldering iron won't have the energy to heat up the lead free solder enough to suck up the solder using a plain solder sucker.

 

In addition, bigger connectors like the vga and dvi connectors have those bigger pins on the sides,  which are kind of like clips, they have a bit of spring to them and separate ... so you have to suck up all that solder and then use pliers or something to squeeze them. Only then you'd have to handle the individual pins

 

here's how it looks:

 

 

To remove or replace just a capacitor, it's possible to use a cheaper soldering station with a bit of help.  LIQUID FLUX will help a lot ... even if the solder you have says it has flux inside, adding a few drops of flux really does help substantially.

 

Get a heat gun or a paint stripping gun or a good hair dryer and heat the bottom of the board to around 80 C (hold whatever you use a bit of distance away from the board) - don't go over or you may start to melt plastics on the other side.

now that the board is warm in that area ... apply some liquid flux over the joints you want to desolder.. the flux will be activated by the heat on the board, or when you bring the soldering iron tip to it, and the flux will act like an acid corroding the layers of oxides over the solder of the joints which would otherwise act as a block, preventing heat from the iron to go into the solder.

You can use  even a cheaper soldering gun or a proper soldering station and ADD some LEADED solder to the joints you want to desolder. The leaded solder melts at 180-183c instead of 217c or more for lead free solder, so by adding leaded solder you reduce the melting temperature of the existing solder so your soldering iron / gun / station doesn't have to pump so much eat into the leads and by consequence into all the copper layers of the motherboard.

Now add solder to the other joint and then constantly flip between heating each pin of the capacitor (or whatever) or if the tip is flat and large enough, heat both joints at same time until both joints are flowing, the solder is visible melting... now you can simply pull out the capacitor leads from the other side.

 

If the holes get filled with some of this solder, then you can find some syringe needle or STAINLESS STEEL sewing needle - solder will not stick to stainless steel - and you can again heat up the solder over that hole (add more solder if needed)  and once the solder is liquid you can quickly push the needle in the hole and the solder will be pushed out and won't stick to stainless steel like I said.

 

Now you can put the new part.

 

With those big connectors like DVI and VGA you won't be able to use a cheap soldering gun (one of those you plug directly in the mains), you'll need a proper soldering station which can monitor the tip temperature where you want it.  You'll still need some extra heat to keep the board warm.

So after sucking the solder on those bigger clips on the sides... what I would basically do is wet all the pins with liquid flux and then flood the pins with leaded solder basically make a big blob of solder connecting ALL the pins together in a big blob of solder.

Heat up this blob with the soldering station (you need to have a quality one that would be able to pump heat into such a big area) and then pull the connector from the other side, and squeezing those clips if needed.

 

 

 

 

Its only a  double sided board. And he doesnt need to put a new connector in.

[mariushm]

19 minutes ago, gnomik said:

Its only a  double sided board. And he doesnt need to put a new connector in.

it's double sided but it's made out of 4-6 layers with copper on each side, stacked together. that's a lot of copper.

HEDT and low end server boards can have up to 8-10 layers.

 

And some mainframe / super servers can go over 16.. at that point some connectors aren't even soldered anymore, they just rely on friction

 

you need at least 4 layers to route traces between cpu socket and ddr3/4 slots.. here's an example of routing ddr3 slots (each color = different layer)

 

 

[gnomik]

Just now, mariushm said:

it's double sided but it's made out of 4-6 layers with copper on each side, stacked together. that's a lot of copper.

HEDT and low end server boards can have up to 8-10 layers.

 

And some mainframe / super servers can go over 16.. at that point some connectors aren't even soldered anymore, they just rely on friction

 

you need at least 4 layers to route traces between cpu socket and ddr3/4 slots.. here's an example of routing ddr3 slots (each color = different layer)

 

 

Yeah. But the board he has, is only 2 layer(4 layer max, but i doubt it). Its not a motherboard.

[Unimportant]

35 minutes ago, gnomik said:

Its only a  double sided board.

The board in the picture has to be 4 layers at least. There is no way to connect all the pins on that TQFP chip and all those connectors without compromising the integrity of the power and ground planes.

[gnomik]

3 minutes ago, Unimportant said:

The board in the picture has to be 4 layers at least. There is no way to connect all the pins on that TQFP chip and all those connectors without compromising the integrity of the power and ground planes.

Looking at this picture

id say its a 2 layer board.

[Unimportant]

2 minutes ago, gnomik said:

id say its a 2 layer board.

Judging from that picture you might be right!

 

Either a masterpiece of board design or the thing won't pass any serious interference testing.

 

Can still be tough to desolder tough. I stand by my original recommendation to sacrifice the connector to guarantee the safety of the board.

[gnomik]

Just now, Unimportant said:

Either a masterpiece of board design or the thing won't pass any serious interference testing.

Just now, Unimportant said:

I stand by my original recommendation to sacrifice the connector

I would agree, its the safest thing to try, also there is no real reason to try to save the connector. Cheaper to buy them lol.