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Soldering help
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yotsuya:
Hey, all!

In tweaking my control panel tonight, I hate to say it but the cable ribbon going from my Turbo Twist 2  to the interface board got detached.  :banghead:

I've learned how to do a ton of stuff in the past six months, but I am sad to say that I just don't have the steady hands needed for such precise soldering. I cleaned off the hot glue blob that was there for support, but I just don't think I'd be able to reattach it without making a big mess.

I know that some of you here are wizards at this kind of thing. I'd be willing to pay anyone here a reasonable amount for their time and skill. I've attached a picture to show how precise it needs to be. Please PM me if you think you can help. Failing that, Randy, do you sell the Turbo Twist 2 master interface board separately?

It's killing me. We're taking my machine to an 80s party this weekend, and I want to be able to play Tempest and Tron the right way! Thanks in advance for any assistance!
MonMotha:
Oh, that's easy.  :)

The hardest part is stripping the ribbon cable cleanly.

The first step is to get everything all cleaned up.  Scrape off all the hot glue and such, then remove all the old wire from the holes, if there are holes.  Clean the holes out using a solder sucker and/or solderwick.  If there are just lands on the surface of the PCB, just clean up with solderwick so you have a nice flat surface.

Now you'll need to strip the ribbon cable.  I've had good luck with using a knife to score both sides of the insulation then bending the resulting "stub" and pulling until the insulation comes off, leaving just the wires.  The other option is to use a knife to separate the wires from the ribbon and strip them using wire strippers.  It's usually AWG28 or AWG30, so you'll need a good wire stripper.  The hardest part of the process will be keeping all these wires clean since they are often stranded.  You can try to twist them, but I find it best to just keep things straight and tidy.

Now just place the ribbon's wires into the holes you've cleaned out or cleaned surface lands and solder.

If you don't think you can do it, I can, or ask Randy.  Randy's usually pretty good about fixing things up for people at reasonable cost.
RandyT:

No problem.  If you send it to me, I will fix it for you.  The only concern I have at the moment is that you won't have it this weekend, unless you are pretty close by.

If you want to go ahead and follow MonMotha's advice, then give it a go.  The only thing I would add is that this arrangement was designed to be easy to solder all of those connections.  You just need to clean the old wire bits off the board, and don't worry about leaving solder on the pads.  Get some electronics flux and dab some on the pads, put a little bit of solder on the tip of your iron and run it across the pads.  It should load up each of the pads with solder, with no blobs joining any of the pads.  Then cut the cable below where the wires separate, so you have a straight across cut and no separated wires.  Using the method MonMotha suggested, strip the insulation away, leaving a little more than 1/32" of exposed wires, and make sure they are all separated, with no wire strands touching adjacent wires.  Put a little flux on each of the exposed wire ends, align to the pads and touch each one with a hot iron.  It should wick the solder right to each wire without too much trouble.  The key is the use of flux.  Without it, it will be much trickier.  As long as you don't leave the iron on the pads too long or try to power it up with a short, and keep the cable in the proper orientation, you shouldn't cause any damage to anything else.

If you have connectors which fit the pins on the board, I can also get you the pinout of the ribbon so you can splice or crimp the connectors to the appropriate wires and just plug them in.

Best to email me on this.
BurgerKingDiamond:
It really doesn't look like a tough soldering job. The most important thing is to USE FLUX! I ignored this for a long time and my soldering sucked because of it. So flux both the soldering points on the PCB and the wires. Then tin the wires with a little solder. You can also get different sized tips, so try and get one that's really small and pointy for the more delicate stuff. Also, put some hot glue over the wires where they meet the board to act as a stress reliever so that your joints hold.

RandyT:

--- Quote from: BurgerKingDiamond on April 05, 2011, 09:11:24 am ---It really doesn't look like a tough soldering job. The most important thing is to USE FLUX! I ignored this for a long time and my soldering sucked because of it. So flux both the soldering points on the PCB and the wires. Then tin the wires with a little solder. You can also get different sized tips, so try and get one that's really small and pointy for the more delicate stuff. Also, put some hot glue over the wires where they meet the board to act as a stress reliever so that your joints hold.

--- End quote ---

If one has a solder pot, then tinning the wires is fine.  If not, it's not necessary in this case.  The key here is to make sure the individual wire strands stay in their own groups, and any extra messing around with them will cause them to splay and work against one in that regard.  A little flux is all that is necessary on the wires.

If yotsuya manages to do a good job, that is permanent, then hot melt is fine.  But I suggest that he send it back so we can do a proper fix, and if he intends to do that, no hot melt.
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