Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Push Button...

This afternoon, I brutally murdered and disposed of the body of a push button soldered on the PCB of my DIY 8MHz computer system today.

It all started when I soldered my push button in the wrong orientation. So given no other choice I have to desolder the 4 pins of the button and pull the button out of the PCB. Unfortunately, the stubborn push button refuse to comply and insist to keep its place in the PCB as there were some solder trapped in the through holes.

After 30 minutes of 'gentle' persuasion without any progress, I decided to resort to cruelty. Firstly, I pry out the cap of the button with a plier. Then forcefully remove the springs under the cap with a pincer. After which I separated the button base from the 4 connecting pins using a cutter. And finally desolder the stubborn pins one by one from the through hole.

The whole process took me like 45 minutes, and finally I was able to solder a new push button into the correct position after removing its stubborn predecessor.

I took a sign of relief and look at the remains of the murdered push button.

Lesson learnt : Soldering is easy, but desoldering is ULTRA difficult!

2 comments:

tan-ce said...

yes... and when the component is expensive and you try to save it... that's painful...

Huan Jin said...

Totally agree hahaha!... working with some expensive chips now haha, and hopefully i won't fry them... =p

But good thing is that the push button is nothing more then a cheap plastic with some metal in it which i have like another 9 in my tool box...XD... else i may sacrifice the PCB instead..