Thermal glue?

[Stormrider]

I've just finished soldering my psx pad hack. A friend of mine told me that there's a kind of glue that has to be heated  and that you can apply on the surface of the pcb in order to immobilize the wires and so fasten the solder joints. You can even submerge the whole pcb in a small box full of glue. Now, is this recommended? Any problems with electronics?

[Fozzy The Bear]

I've just finished soldering my psx pad hack. A friend of mine told me that there's a kind of glue that has to be heated  and that you can apply on the surface of the pcb in order to immobilize the wires and so fasten the solder joints. You can even submerge the whole pcb in a small box full of glue. Now, is this recommended? Any problems with electronics?

No, not thermal glue....... The stuff that you cover an entire PCB in is called potting compound. It's basically an epoxy resin that turns your PCB into an epoxy brick.  It's mostly used to protect circuit boards in very dusty dirty or wet environments or where they're subject to high vibration. It's available from most electronics suppliers. Personally I've used ordinary quick set epoxy to do the same thing before now.  You don't really need it in an arcade machine.

The downside to potting compound is that if a component fails, you have to scrap the whole board, because you can never remove it. Plus you can't use it on boards that generate a lot of heat, as the components can't cool underneath it.

But you can use hot melt glue after soldering your wires on your gamepad board, to hold your wires still and stable on the board surface, without any damage to your components.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Level42]

Ask Amplifone about good potting materials 

Anyway, indeed, hot glue gun is not a bad idea to fix soldered wires on PCBs. Many people still think a soldering is a mechanical connection. It's not. It's just an electrical connection.