Whole motherboard, probably not. However it is a technique some have used on smaller daughter boards in things like the video card section of a laptop. It can reflow Ball Grid Array chips which would otherwise take specialist equipment to handle.
Actually heat can do, and it's an established fault finding technique. A hair dryer is useful, or touching the top of a suspect cap with the iron.
Good example is the startup cap in a switch mode PSU, typically 3-10 microfarads, or as similar component on the inverter board driving the backlight of an LCD screen.
I've been restoring vintage computers for years, and it does seem like that might be the case; I've rarely had trouble with capacitors on older items (other than filters on the mains input), but the ones used in a lot of modern equipment seem dreadful (and as someone pointed out, more than seems logically down to the whole motherboard capacitor plague debacle) cheers
Jules
Agreed; after caps it's often bad solder joints, bad board interconnects and IC sockets, shorted transistors and diodes in power stages - in other words, 'logical' stuff that's easy to work your way through. I've seen lots of "contamination" cases too - battery leaks, staples/paperclips making their way inside cases, or even simple dirt and dust build-up resulting in overheating.
ESR meters are funny - extremely useful, but at one point they seemed difficult to find (I ended up building my own using bits from the junk pile). I think they're more readily available these days, though.
cheers
Jules
rote:
nI'm glad you've said that.
NT
Have been running a S-series Gigabyte board for nearly 4 years with all-solid capacitor build. The capacitors are canned. They reckon on an operational lifetime for their Ultra Durable 2 of 3 times normal solid capacitors and 18 times electrolytics. It was a factor in choosing.
Never is a long time. There are occasions when structural integrity of a joint cannot be acheived without using a solder which is lead- free. Joint preparation is just more critical.
Microwaves are the highest risk appliance to diy repair, and the level of knowledge on them is here, but is not in the majority vote-wise. The last thread we had on nukes was more bs than expertise.
NT
None of the SM stuff I did was glued. It was all solder paste and then into the vapour bath.
I don't think I have ever found glue on a SM component so it must be something that varies from industry to industry.
In message , Graham. writes
That rather depends on whether its a breadboard or not
"Regular" use
Failure earlier than I would have hoped, but within the time scales of what might be expected
With a capacitor, yes - with an IC, no
In message , Alan writes
Then go and gain some more experience then ...
I presume it holds the component in place prior to the soldering process
Yes, it has a heated tip to melt the solder, then you depress the trigger and it sucks like an essex girl. An impulse action might have been better but it's OK
Ah, but while its become an essential tool for us because of the amount of use it gets, I felt it my duty to post the link for those who NEED a new toy
In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes
But the link I posted above is new, ready to go and has 12 months warranty at a sensible price
So for light use, buying a spare with the machine ought to cover them dropping the product before one needs parts?
You get a spare in the goodies bag
Generally no as much as an hour, commonly used on X-Box360 which had a failure rate running at 30%....
In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes
Each has their own niche
In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote
The average Dicer is likely to dump the product if it cost more that £25 to repair, including components. Possibly specifying more than a £4 DMM from Ebay and a £5 package from CPC comprising a soldering iron, sucker, solder and cutters is likely to put them off on cost alone.
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