Top Tips

Stranded wire works as solder wick, too. It's also much cheaper than coax.

Adam, I like that one

but doesn't EVERYBODY have a loft, with a budgie -cage and a load of 75 ohm coax from the old, 405 line aerial?

Well, I just found this trick useful. I'm glad I read it. Sure, I have a propane torch and a desoldering iron, but this was way quicker, cuz I had some appropriate wire within arms reach.

Only simple, but i keep all spare pieces of wire (long and short) in a box for when i crack the breadboard out, don't like waste!
I do the same with old pcbs that i think look 'interesting', sometimes for salvaging components off, other times so i can re-use em. Found an old power supply from an xbox earlier, can be used as a quick psu.

the old strings from electric guitars make for a great way to remove solder from holes in a pcb .
they come in several gauges . just cut them to a convenient length .
heat the solder and rapidly run the piece of wire back and forth through the hole .
the wrapped strings are particularly effective .

i have some mounted (drilled and epoxied) in small diameter short length wooden doweling . i color coded the different sizes for easy grabbing .

This post has been edited by CWB on May 16, 2008 07:34 pm

I do the same myself. I keep all wire from stuff I junk for parts. I have a large wire box & now I only have to purchase wire when I need a long piece.
I also have several boxes of circuit boards that I keep as a parts mine, for when I need a resistor or cap that isn't in my regular stock. I usually only pull a few of the more important parts off of a board when I remove it for junk; the rest goes into the parts mine.

what is the best way to disassemble a hard drive w/ out a star tip?

Hammer?

...Maybe not...

Best bet is finding a tool that grabs the screws... pliers or cutters if necessary (gripping inside or out, whatever works). Or chisel on the side of the screw to rotate it, that's also good for stuck screws.

Tim

Someone recently mentioned cutting a slot in them with a dremel then using a standard screwdriver. Might be able to do that with a hacksaw as well...

thanks for the tip got another question

what is the procedure for soldering or un-soldering IC chips?
do you just heat the leg like a regular component or are they negatively affected by the heat from doing it like that?
thanks

you want to get on and off them as fast as you can . they don't like excessive heat .

solder wick , solder sucker and a pick .
a low wattage soldering pencil ... adjustable units are nice .
heat the solder directly ... not up on the leg .
keep your tip clean .

i keep a little extra solder on the tip ... it helps to conduct the heat to the work faster .

Some of the guys have reported good success with a propane torch and whacking the board to jar them out. Only if you don't want to keep the board though. This has already been covered somewhere, perhaps in this thread (not sure).

Btw, this thread is for sharing tips, not Q&A.

One leg at a time. It is actually pretty hard to heat damage most components, you really have to bake them. Most components will withstand soldering temps for many seconds without problems. When removing a dead IC, sometimes it pays to cut all of the legs with small side cutters, & then desolder the stubs one at a time.

This thread got forgotten for long time

Anyway, Big buttons from broken calculators or other devices can be hot glued and used as feet for project cases.
These on the pic are rubber ones from a calculator:




edit ... touched up the pix a little .
cwb

For storing MOSFETs and other TO-220 MOS devices (up to 5 pins): My new dumb little trick is to stick them on an extra breadboard, one part on one bus to short all the pins to each other. Foam's probably better but I don't have any and this is better than having them lounging around in a plastic drawer. And I ordered my breadboards from China: got like 6 of them for 10 bucks, so I can get away with using one of them in this manner.

-Adam O.

if your just trying to get a burned out IC out shove a screw driver under it and pull up it will break the ic off and then just de solder the pins

... just don't tear up the board in the process .

No kidding. There are lots of ICs that are quite a bit stronger than the board beneath them. Cut the legs with a Dremel or small cutters, then unsolder the legs one at a time. If the board is especially complicated, the new IC can be soldered directly to the leg stubs from the old one, to avoid damaging delicate traces on the bottom of the board.

EIA manufacturer codes. Can help identify what you have from those mysterious numbers
(not all manufacturers got a code and some didn't play by the rules)

The top part of the metal casing of VCR's is useful as a work surface when soldering or using a glue gun. Remove the top casing from the VCR and bend the sides out so it's all like a horizontal sheet.

Regards

PIC

old egg cartons make ideal containers for golf balls.. ..except they're a bit too small..

Seam ripper to undo the tight braided shield mostly for that pesky Belden 1192A Start with the sharp edge and use the dull side to unbraid.

2 single edge razor blades flip at 180 and slightly shifted, put some tape around and it's perfect to slice open heavy jacket cables. I use it a lot when I make heavy gauge AC extension cords. Slice on both side of the cable then pull down on the 2 pieces of jacket to have fresh untouched wires inside

The deepness of the blade gets adjusted by the shifting of the 2 blades.

That method is so fast and I am so used to it by now that I use it on mic cable and even smaller cables.

Tip - Don't put an electric heater underneath the (metal) cabinet housing all your heatshrink........

Don't ask.

on the bright side ... you now have drawers full of spaghetti .