PCB Solder Pad Repair & Cleanup

What do you do when your motherboard is covered in electrolytic grime, has damaged pads and traces that are falling apart? You call [RetroGameModz] to work their magic with epoxy and solder.

While this video is a bit old, involved repair videos never go out of style. What makes this video really special is that it breaks from the common trend of “watch me solder in silence” (or it’s close cousin, “watch me solder to loud music”). Instead, [RetroGameModz] walks you through what they’re doing, step by step in their repair of a motherboard. And boy do they have their work cut out for them: the motherboard they’re working on has definitely seen better days. Specifically, it was better before corrosion from a leaking electrolytic capacitor and the well-meaning touch of its owner.

After a quick review of the damage, all of the components are removed from the battle zone. Then the cleaning begins, taking special precautions not to rip pads up. After everything’s cleaned up, things get really interesting. [RetroGameModz] starts to make their own pads from raw copper using the old pads as templates to replace the missing ones on the motherboard. After a bit of epoxy, it’s hard to tell that the pads were handmade, they fit in so well.

This epoxy trick is also used to deal with some heavily damaged traces, cool! During this repair, [RetroGameModz] used an epoxy that is heat resistant up to 315°C for 60 seconds. If you ever find any kind of epoxy on the market that is specified to be heat resistant up to more than 315°C, [RetroGameModz] would be quite happy if you could leave some info in the comment section, as they’ve found high-temperature epoxies quite difficult to source.

This goes to show that some repairs really should be done by professionals. [RetroGameModz] surely agrees, stating that “If you are not a repair technician and your motherboard has stopped working, it would be in the best of your own interest not to attempt a repair that you really cannot handle.” Good advice. But, we can never resist trying to fix things ourselves before handing things off to the more experienced. Call it a vice, or a virtue; we’ll call it fun.

What do you think? Are there some repairs you rely on technicians for? Or do you fix everything yourself? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks [Juan] for sending this in!

Filed under: repair hacks