Macintosh Classic II checkerboard display

#31 Tue, 13 Jul 2010 - 16:55

if found that if i tried heating the body of the capacitor or just 1 lead at a time, it eventually tears the pad off the circuit board.
What i use to avoid it, is CAREFULLY heating the board up with a heatgun. careful, meaning dont blast it everywhere and melt all the plastic.

A heat gun can be useful, especially when desoldering larger chips with many leads. One way to avoid blasting surrounding components off of the board is to cover them with some modeling clay. A package of modeling clay will last you for a lifetime of soldering (unless you do an amazing amount of desoldering). Keep it in a ziplock bag so it doesn't dry out.

All that said, really, the easiest way to desolder surface mount capacitors and resistors without damaging the traces, pads or board is to use *two* soldering pencils simultaneously. Apply one to each pad of the component and wait until it will gently lift off of the board.

Just go to Radio Shack and buy their 15 watt soldering pencil with grounded tip as your second pencil. It's $8.99, which isless than $10. It may be lower quality than most folks want as a primary soldering tool (it is my primary soldering tool; I have two of them) but you can get one as a second pencil for when you want to desolder caps and resistors. If one is outside the USA I'm not sure where one would go for an inexpensive serviceable pencil but there's probably an equivalent.