(un)Soldering

[matthias@bahianet.com.br (Matthias Grob)]

Olivier was searching for help, and I post this to the list, hoping that
others might want to learn about soldering.
If you do not want to solder at all, consider changing your mind, it helps
saving money and making strange cables on the spot.
If you know all about it, delete.

>Well yes. I eventually end up unscrewing the vortex with the soldering
>iron in the other hand and... I'll be pretty ridiculous...

You sure take your time to gather curage :-)

The faulty pot
>is solderred by 6 points. I spent 1 hour tryng to unsolder the bad one..
>And never succeeded (I told you I was to look like an idiot!) How do you
>people used with electronic stuff do to unsolder a thing with many
>soldering points? Of course each time I had one unsoldered, the pot was
>still firmy attached by the 5 others, and the time to get an other one dne
>the first was already cold again.

I should have told you: there are three tools:
-One is a special wire, cheap that sucks the solder (capilary effect or
so). You just hold it on the solder, heat it up, and when the solder is in
the wire, you cut that piece and trow it away.

-Two is a small vacuum pump. Its cost like 10$ and might work a little
better. You heat the solder, hold the pump on it, press its button and
shluppp, the solder is sucked it

-Three is the best, but expensive. It is a solder iron with a canal in its
tip and a pump behind. If all fails, you will have to go to a rep to use
this machine.

>My pityfull attempts led to nothing but signs of fatigue on the mother
>board.

This is a serious problem. The solder lugs can come off the board,
especially when forcing it while its hot.
Once it happened you can still fix it, reforcing with plain wire.

>Because I was quite lucky, this petty work led to  -I suppose- over
>heating the faulty pot that now works perfectly (!!!).

You are lucky really. I had a case with a Eventide unit, where the flux was
hindering the oscilator. Heating it resolved the problem forever. I doubt
that this is your case, though...

>The soldering metal did not came with the iron

Buy some dedicated soldering wire (about 1mmD) with the flux liquid IN it.
Its common. The flux is necessary to make the contact smooth. For a good
solder point, you heat the point, add the wire, and as soon as it flows
nice and filled the point, you go away with the soldering iron. If you have
to heat it longer to put things in place, give it another bit of the
soldering wire in the end, so its flux finishes up again, to make a shiny
smooth little heap. The opaque ones tend to fail after some years...

> there is metal on both
>sides of the mother board. One side is not possibl to access beacise of
>the pot themselves.

With the tools above, you can suck it through the whole, but its not very 
easy.

>God knows I feel so ridiculous...

Never mind. But its good to know a bit about soldering.

Matthias