Unsolder Components
There's more to use it for than heat shrink. Unsoldering components with a desoldering iron and solder sucker can take awhile. With a heatgun solder melts all at once which lets things just pop out. It takes less effort and sometimes will work better. Although it is much easier, I think it has more risk. After awhile things can start smoking and be too hot to handle for a minute. The fumes of melting plastic are toxic, and the heat can damage the components being retrieved.
Why?
I bought a nice AXP motherboard a few months ago for $5 and it turned out it didn't work. The northbridge has a physically minor yet fatal chip in it. It was unfortunate, but for me it still has its money's worth with the components. The capacitors on it are commonly used on boards and would let me repair something. Also when bread boarding things it's nice to have more choices; like with Lego pieces. By clearing the board the components can be stored easier. A lot of these chips I can't really use or damaged them from removal, but it's cool to see them fall off and then examine them.
First Round
Row 1: toroidal inductors, crystal oscillators, diode, CR2032 socket, jumpers
Row 2: NF2 southbridge, NF2 northbridge, SATA controller, thermal controller, bios
Row 3: RCA jack, serial header, capacitors, green LED
Row 4: PCB mount L-SATA connectors
Row 5: 3-pin fan headers, jumper header
Second Round
Row 1: DIMM anchors, jumpers
Row 2: Socket 462 housing
Row 3: Ethernet & USB module, ATX 20-pin male
Row 4: Various Chips, Capacitors
Row 5: Header, Voltage regulator?, Inductors, Oscillator
Thoughts
I was amused to get that socket out minus a few pins. It was pretty simple, heat up the back side and keep tapping it without getting burns. I should collect sockets along with the processors I've hoarded. As for the use of these parts, to be realistic, the caps and fan headers will probably be the only things I reuse. I might use the RCA jack for another project. From the first round the Silicon Image chip looked familiar to me. It turns out it's in a card I have on my desk.
Now I wonder what would happen if I took a board that shares a PCB layout with a deluxe model and obtained chips for the empty pads. Could the board be self-upgraded? Add 1394 or a comm port to something. There's not much going on here, but I felt like making this my first thread on [H]. I like taking photos and doing stuff with electronics, so if there's a mild interest I'll post future things. I've got two Lian Li desktop projects going on that I'll definitely post somewhere once I'm finished. Custom cabling works the best for wire management.
There's more to use it for than heat shrink. Unsoldering components with a desoldering iron and solder sucker can take awhile. With a heatgun solder melts all at once which lets things just pop out. It takes less effort and sometimes will work better. Although it is much easier, I think it has more risk. After awhile things can start smoking and be too hot to handle for a minute. The fumes of melting plastic are toxic, and the heat can damage the components being retrieved.
Why?
I bought a nice AXP motherboard a few months ago for $5 and it turned out it didn't work. The northbridge has a physically minor yet fatal chip in it. It was unfortunate, but for me it still has its money's worth with the components. The capacitors on it are commonly used on boards and would let me repair something. Also when bread boarding things it's nice to have more choices; like with Lego pieces. By clearing the board the components can be stored easier. A lot of these chips I can't really use or damaged them from removal, but it's cool to see them fall off and then examine them.
First Round
Row 1: toroidal inductors, crystal oscillators, diode, CR2032 socket, jumpers
Row 2: NF2 southbridge, NF2 northbridge, SATA controller, thermal controller, bios
Row 3: RCA jack, serial header, capacitors, green LED
Row 4: PCB mount L-SATA connectors
Row 5: 3-pin fan headers, jumper header
Second Round
Row 1: DIMM anchors, jumpers
Row 2: Socket 462 housing
Row 3: Ethernet & USB module, ATX 20-pin male
Row 4: Various Chips, Capacitors
Row 5: Header, Voltage regulator?, Inductors, Oscillator
Thoughts
I was amused to get that socket out minus a few pins. It was pretty simple, heat up the back side and keep tapping it without getting burns. I should collect sockets along with the processors I've hoarded. As for the use of these parts, to be realistic, the caps and fan headers will probably be the only things I reuse. I might use the RCA jack for another project. From the first round the Silicon Image chip looked familiar to me. It turns out it's in a card I have on my desk.
Now I wonder what would happen if I took a board that shares a PCB layout with a deluxe model and obtained chips for the empty pads. Could the board be self-upgraded? Add 1394 or a comm port to something. There's not much going on here, but I felt like making this my first thread on [H]. I like taking photos and doing stuff with electronics, so if there's a mild interest I'll post future things. I've got two Lian Li desktop projects going on that I'll definitely post somewhere once I'm finished. Custom cabling works the best for wire management.
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