I’m trying to solder on the flex cable for a PicoFly. I’ve added some solder to the bottom two points that are touching the metal surrounding the CPU. However, I seem to only be making a bigger and bigger ball of solder when trying to melt it. I’ve upped the temperature on my iron but that doesn’t seem to be doing anything. What am I doing wrong?

  • remotelove@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Thanks for the pic! That helps visualize the situation for me. Unfortunately, I can’t be much more of a help.

    Getting a sense of how hot to get everything with air is a dark art. I can only say that it’s needs to be below the solder melting point and too hot to touch any part of the component.

    On top of the shield sinking heat, the board is likely using silver-based solder, which also requires high heat. (Flux would have a dual role in cleaning the area and also flowing some heat around the solder joint a hair more efficiently.)

    If it were my equipment, I would YOLO the iron temps and experiment with contact timing to get the factory solder melted enough to flow in some lead/tin solder. My tolerance for damaging my own stuff is super high though. (Brute-forcing as much heat on a small area before it gets the chance to dissipate is the logic here.)

    Practice makes perfect. If you have an old wifi/Bluetooth device you can risk destroying, it might have shields you can practice removing or soldering around. (Noise sensitive audio components are something else that might use shields as well.)