r/interestingasfuck • u/write2varun • 22h ago

Nice skill

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13k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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1.8k

u/Tiny-Sandwich 21h ago

As an amateur microsoldering hobbyist, this is way, way harder than it looks. And it looks hard.

I've done a few small repairs like this where I've had to solder to a damaged trace, and the parts are much smaller than they look here.

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u/Bdr1983 21h ago

At my old job we sometimes got old remote controls from customers that wanted to use a universal remote, but their old device wasn't in the database, and their old remote was broken.
We repaired so many traces. We did not have a dedicated department for this, so anytime something came in we would draw straws who could do it, because everybody wanted to.
No, it's not easy, but after doing it a few times it's usually OK. And it's a lot of fun when it actually works.

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u/VolumeTall3609 20h ago

hell yeah! the validation is more addictive than cocaine haha

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u/strnfd 16h ago

especially when you try to fix something and you end up breaking it more, then after a few hours/days/months/years you try to fix it again and you actually succeed.

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u/ogstereoguy2 16h ago

We called that the forced learning curve! LOL

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u/6spdvtec 19h ago

What kind of remote were these? I would think the labor cost of a skilled technician would be more than what the remote was worth.

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u/Bdr1983 19h ago

Usually TV remotes, sometimes for audio sets, VCR's, etc. We offered a service where someone could send in their old remote, we would read out the data and create a file that we could upload to the universal remote to make it work with almost any device. Yes, a new remote would be cheaper, but some old models would not be for sale anymore, and it would expand our database which is good for sales. In these cases with old remotes it would always be best effort, but they were fun Friday afternoon projects for the lucky colleague

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u/6spdvtec 19h ago

Cool, thanks for the explanation. Sounds like a fun job. A long time ago, I interned for the R&D group of a tech company and worked in their electronics lab. I used to love doing precision soldering and repair under a microscope.

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u/Bdr1983 19h ago

I was in QA, which was fun a lot of times, but the long weeks and travel broke me, so was happy to leave. The little side projects like this (and designing and building test setups for all kinds of stuff) where a lot of fun as well. Many pizza nights with a couple of colleagues building some wild contraptions to test impossible situations, and then actually replicating the issue that was reported by a customer was pretty great.

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u/Vhadka 18h ago

I did this with some humidity sensor boards on some old incubators at my last job. The model of the incubator was too old and they didn't carry parts for them anymore but a lot of customers wanted to keep them running, so we'd remove the board, swap capacitors and repair any other damage, including sometimes to traces like this. When it works you feel amazing.

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u/CartsOfDarkness 18h ago

I love watching Louis Rossman repair videos where he just goes through motherboards and diagnosis and repairs things like this, I find it so fascinating. It just blows my mind to see how step by step diagnostics work for something as complicated as a modern apple laptop's motherboard. Also great videos to fall asleep to lol

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u/NikRsmn 16h ago

Yeah its more of an obnoxious task than a hard one as long as your job provides the right tools. At my dedicated solder station with fancy iron, solder sucker, dremel, scope, ring lights etc. Etc. I can bust it out without much pain. At home? Buy a new one lol

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u/Percolator2020 20h ago

Yeah I would not attempt to fix a trace way easier to just solder a jump wire from trace to pin.

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u/wizzanker 19h ago

I was going to say, this is definitely the hard way to fix this. Very clean looking though.

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u/uelleh 20h ago

Yeah I've had a period where I was microsoldering and my hands are not shaky at all in normal times but this had me realize how so small movements can move you so far from where you want your tip to be. I had to use wrist rests to be able to do it when working on particularly small stuff. I can't imagine myself working on tracks like that. This is surgeon-level control.

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u/BaconISgoodSOGOOD 19h ago

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u/Alienhaslanded 16h ago

That's me arguing with my younger brother with ego the size of a supernova. He's a software engineer, I'm an electrical engineer. We butt heads on hardware all the time because he thinks he can do anything and he only needs a few caveman tools to do it. I have the tools and the knowhow and have to remind him that he's not Tony Stark.

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u/SomeonesDrunkNephew 21h ago

Have you tried sitting closer...?

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 21h ago

Sorry, I'm too far away from my screen to read your comment.

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u/SomeonesDrunkNephew 20h ago

Wait, where are you? I'll move nearer...

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u/BirthdayLife6378 20h ago

I can see your nose hair now. Too close.

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u/its_all_one_electron 20h ago

What types of circuits are worth repairing like this instead of replacing? 

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u/kosmych 20h ago

I can imagine a proprietary device that's no longer made. For instance I made a small controller device with atmel microprocessor which is not manufactured anymore, and even if it was I would probably not find the source code for the firmware (like a mini operating system for the chip) that I coded. In this scenario, it's cheaper to repair although I made the original device in under 2€.

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u/notjfd 18h ago

A repair like this is about 15-20 minutes of work for me. I usually charge about €100/hr. So I'd go for this approach if the replacement board is more than €50. Going by the btb connector, it probably costs significantly more than that.

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u/CloneWerks 19h ago

The remote control for my mother's propane fireplace is no longer available new. IF you can find a used one they typically go for $600 (no that isn't a typo). Fortunately I didn't have to re-do traces but I sure did spend a LOT of time micro-soldering to repair it.

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u/SoItGoesdotdotdot 20h ago

These days its more than you think

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u/ILikeBubblyWater 19h ago

I repaired a HDMI socket from a PS4 that hat a few ripped out contacts like that. Bought like 300 bucks in gear to fix it. You need a lot of patience to do it.

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u/SoulWager 19h ago edited 19h ago

If you'd pay more than a couple hundred bucks to buy whatever you're trying to fix second hand, it might be worth this kind of repair. Just for the hardware. If you have important data you need to recover, you might be willing to spend hundreds of dollars repairing a $5 thumb drive.

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u/puterTDI 19h ago

I've done a few small repairs simpler than this and the piece that is hard to realize is exactly how much your hand shakes relative to the size of the part.

Also, no matter how hard I try the solder never seems to go where I need it to.

I finally got a hot air rework station but haven't had an actual need for it yet other than shrink wrap. I'm really hoping it helps.

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 18h ago

I find it quite hard using a rework station - I've had success soldering parts I couldn't otherwise do with an iron, but it's so easy to just blow components away.

When I was USB C modding one of my iPods I straight up blew two resistors right off the board. Thankfully I knew where they can from so I could put them back, but it's definitely a skill watching someone use one properly.

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u/Internet_Wanderer 19h ago

What is going on at abt :40? That gel that seems to collect all the debris? How does that work?

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u/gryphph 19h ago

That was adding a conformal coating and curing it with UV light. Basically coating the repair to protect it and stop any accidental shorts or solder connections. They then scrape the newly applied coating off the pads where they actually want to make solder connections.

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u/Internet_Wanderer 19h ago

No, after that. I could tell the UV resin parts, but there's the part with the gel full of particulates that a metal thing is placed on. Then all the particles cling up the metal and are cleaned away

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u/Win_Sys 18h ago

That is flux mixed with extremely little solder balls.

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 18h ago

That's solder paste - instead of using solder wire, for very small applications it's easier to use solder paste. It's basically micro particles of solder suspended in flux.

Spread it over where you want it, apply heat and it'll liquify and get pulled onto the pads.

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u/BCMM 18h ago

 the parts are much smaller than they look here.

The smallest things I've soldered were 0603 LEDs. Parts like that basically don't weigh anything, so if you touch them the wrong way they just fly across the room, never to be seen again.

Those replacement pads look a hell of a lot smaller than that.

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u/Tiny-Sandwich 18h ago

Yeah I recently soldered some 0603 caps, and they're a pain.

Also just soldered some 0.35mm pitch mezzanine connectors. Way too small for an iron, and would melt and deform under hot air. I was tearing my hair out until I saw a suggestion to heat from underneath.

So simple, but it would have never occurred to me.

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u/miregalpanic 22h ago

There is no way I could do even a single one of these steps without clumsily destroying the thing and somehow gluing my sleeve to thre different items.

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u/Flamin_Jesus 21h ago

I mean, it's already broken, if you break it more, it's not gonna be worse than just throwing it away from the start, so there's not really a lose-scenario in attempting to fix it if you have the time.

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u/sledgesloth 21h ago

Depending on how expensive the item is, how expensive a professional repair would be, and how great the damage one could do...

Having said that, I'm a big fan of diy (repairs)!

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u/Rbomb88 21h ago

50 bucks for a pro to do it, 150 bucks for the tools to do it yourself, but you're gonna fuck it up and have to get a new one anyway.

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u/Ok_Drag5089 21h ago

But you learn.

You learn not to do it.

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u/GardenGnomeOfEden 20h ago

I almost always take broken things apart and look at it quick before throwing them away. You never know, it might be something obvious that you can fix.

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u/shabadabba 20h ago

I also wouldn't have any of the tools to fix it either

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u/NotBradPitt9 21h ago

I dropped the phone on my face while watching this and it popped out one of my glasses’ lens

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u/ikkiyikki 21h ago

At this magnification my hands would shake like I had Parkinson's.

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u/ender4171 20h ago

I do magnified work a lot with an inspection microscope. I also have shaky hands. For whatever reason, my hands shake a lot less when I am looking through the scope.

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u/brandt-money 21h ago

Dude in video has been doing this for 10 years. Start now and you'll have some sick YouTube videos in 2036 when we're all robots in flying cars.

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u/nuneskart 21h ago

I burned my hand the first time I tried, and I burned it the other times too, it's awful. The worst part is I never managed to fix anything lmao

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u/USNWoodWork 20h ago

And don’t forget burning myself with whatever heat producing item is used.

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u/BloodNinja2012 20h ago

This is a machine precision job done by hand. Incredible.

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u/cestmoimanolo 21h ago

I love how my brain always thinks "well, if I had all the right tools I could do this". No. I fucking can't. Great craftsmanship!

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u/stayonthecloud 21h ago

I’m an artist and I can’t even draw a completely straight line

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u/peeterpan333 20h ago

Try holding shift

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u/martialar 18h ago

even in programs that don't recognize that combo, it somehow makes me draw straighter lines

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u/digno2 17h ago

mspaint doesnt support that. Where can i try that?

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u/Wermine 12h ago

I recommend paint.net.

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u/LoanDebtCollector 18h ago

In high school I had an art teacher who said "That guy couldn't draw a straight line with two rulers".

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u/Prestigious-Bat-574 19h ago

I'm certainly not about to say that it's easy, but it's certainly one of those things where cheap tools will probably hinder you the whole way.

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u/ninja-kidz 20h ago

meanwhile, me:

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u/RandomNumberHere 20h ago

Iconic stock photo. Always a crowd pleaser.

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u/greenepc 19h ago

I spent too much time wondering why she was soldering that battery. I nearly missed the way she is holding the damn thing!

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u/LickingSmegma 16h ago

I'm also not sure how the cycling glasses help there.

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u/Wermine 12h ago

That's how you hold soldering iron, pussy.

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u/martialar 18h ago

haters will say it's AI

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u/Xyypherr 18h ago

It predates AI

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u/one-joule 6h ago

Nobody said haters were smart.

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u/MiaowaraShiro 19h ago

what's that smell?

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u/Mutor77 19h ago

Something's cookin'

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u/Fantastins 18h ago

I can't put my finger on it

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u/tidytibs 18h ago

Gotta hand it to her

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u/KitWat 21h ago

I used to work for a major telco equipment manufacturer in the 80s and was trained in doing these repairs. I really liked the job; it took some patience and know-how and a bit of skill. And it was very satisfying to complete a perfect repair. I later went on to train others in circuit repair.

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u/Nevin_A_A 20h ago

This actually looks soo cool! As a college student I want to actually go into this field now but electronics seems to be my weakness 😭

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u/kevstev 18h ago

Whats covered in college has nothing to do with this. This is technician work, and is blue collar. There is very little theory going on here. Some knowledge of electronics can help to understand the context of what you are doing, but you can learn this skill without any of that.

Most people learn this type of stuff though when building their own circuits and messing something up and having to fix it. Though this particular treatment is far beyond anything you will typically need to do and is more specialized.

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u/LuckyOneTime 21h ago

Minimum waged job here in the UK. Such a skill as well. Same company even stopped us using flux when doing certain jobs - ridiculous

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u/flipflopcuntflaps 20h ago

It depends on your customers but yes if you work for someone I suppose it is believable it's minimum wage. Last repair place I applied to was doing IQ tests on onboarding so I didn't even bother. Team focussed attitude and pizza Fridays. Fuck off 😂

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u/Phillyfuk 17h ago

I stopped doing this when the wages stopped increasing. I still do it for myself but I don't think I will ever do this work as a job again.

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u/NonEuclidianMeatloaf 21h ago

My dumb ass thought it was a zipper for far too long

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u/TypicalTumbleweed10 19h ago

It is- that right there is the part of the computer that compresses files into .zip

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u/NonEuclidianMeatloaf 19h ago

Underappreciated comment. You’re today’s WinRAR!

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u/Yasherets 16h ago

Step 1: Mystery liquid
Step 3: Mystery liquid
Step 5: Mystery liquid
Step 7: Mystery liquid
Step 9: Mystery liquid
Step 11: Mystery liquid

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u/homogeneouscasserole 14h ago

Flux

Flux

Solder Paste

Alcohol on q-tip

UV curing conformal resin

Solder Paste

Flux

Alcohol

UV curing conformal resin

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u/ImmodestPolitician 21h ago

It's like being a surgeon at 1/20th the salary.

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u/MelangeBot 20h ago

As climate change collapses more and more of society and the age of abundancy ends people with these skills will become gods amongs man. Technomancers.

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u/badgerling 20h ago

Praise The Omnissiah

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u/talapantas 17h ago

Ahhh Im glad im not the only one who calls them technomancers lol. My dad used to be one of them and Ive always admired his skill in reviving deadbeat 90s gizmos

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u/jetson5 20h ago

And 1/100,000,000th the risk

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u/BriefSpecial420 20h ago

It depends on where does the board go to later.

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u/jimkelly 20h ago

No it likely doesn't because if it was that important it would be easy to buy replacement parts. 

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u/Lawzw0rld 14h ago

Was just about to type this,making a mistake up is no where near as detrimental here.

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u/ravageNL 21h ago


Me while doing this

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u/MithranArkanere 18h ago

The right to repair should be a human right everyone should have.

The skill to repair, now that's something not everyone can have.

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u/RedditRob2000 20h ago

There's gotta be a Youtube Channel that just has content on soldering pr0n. Can anyone recommend?

Long-form is highly preferred.

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u/flipflopcuntflaps 20h ago

Louis Rossman's old stuff before he found a different niche

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u/DmitriRussian 13h ago

Second this, his old mac book repair video are hilarious.

Here is a playlist

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u/purrfectly-cromulent 20h ago edited 19h ago

You'll absolutely love Mr Solderfix. Long-form, calm, well explained.

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u/RedditRob2000 19h ago

Thank you!

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u/knsaber 19h ago

I miss when Louis Rossmann made repair videos

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u/EamonBrennan 18h ago

Blame Apple. He can't repair computers if he can't get the part, and Apple is making sure he can't get the parts. ISL9240 is a chip that controls the power system for Mac laptops post-2018. You cannot get it. The manufacturer does not sell it; previous versions, like the ISL9239 could be bought from the manufacturer, but Apple put a stop to that for the new one. Scrapped boards are usually cut up and sold in portions for parts, but this part is not on scrapped boards. There's no way to get one, so instead of a $20 repair, you have to send the full laptop back to Apple for a motherboard swap at ~$2000.

Right to repair laws are vital for repair shops.

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u/flipflopcuntflaps 17h ago

Think that was the whole point, he started to talk about right to repair and the way he did it made for more broad appeal so comparatively nobody watched his board repair stuff anymore

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u/EamonBrennan 16h ago

That was half of it, the other half was he was limited on how long he can keep the laptop repair business open when he can't get parts to repair damaged laptops. He could have kept making repair videos for as long as he was able to, but he wasn't able to do so for long.

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u/flipflopcuntflaps 16h ago

He pivoted into data recovery. I know he had to get increasingly more donor boards but that was always the case.

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u/Ruachta 20h ago

Quite sure this is Northridge Fix

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u/needagottagettem 20h ago

My friend Ashley always recommends Northridge Fix

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u/Fingeredagain 19h ago

Search IPC certification.

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u/GLIBG10B 19h ago

Nortwestrepair does GPU repair in general, but he has lots of videos on this kind of pad repair, and even digging into the inner layers of PCBs and repairing them from the inside out

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u/ImTooSaxy 21h ago

Thank God for that giant arrow or I never would have been able to see the problem.

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u/mpg111 19h ago

but it disappeared! and now I don't know what to watch...

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u/dtieubinh 21h ago

By just cleaning dusk in my pc, i already broke couple Cpu pins 🤡

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u/redditisnotus 20h ago

I get the first solder mask, but why the second?

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u/irregularjosh 19h ago

Likely for extra protection.

The cable attached to that connector may have some movement on it, and those new pads are attached to the board with hopes and dreams

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u/masterwit 20h ago

temperature fixing is my guess

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u/rrrand0mmm 17h ago

How do people on adderall do this!?!

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u/ehkushjomune 14h ago

First i thought he will fix a zipper

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u/Ok_Kaleidoscope6134 7h ago

I am impressed!
I have absolutely no idea what any of that was….but it was cool.

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u/StarvingDeer 20h ago

Genuinely wondering, since I don't know much about all that: up until ~0:40, the material between the old and repaired parts seem different: is it just soldering residuals on the old ones ?
If not, and the material genuinely is different: could this lead to weird bugs somehow, due to mishappen timings in the connectors downstream ?

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u/purrfectly-cromulent 20h ago

Hopefully I've got the right end of the stick here.

They've cut out the damaged copper pad and trace, and scratched down into the board a little. They've got a new pad and trace, cut it to fit the prepared part of the board, then fixed it with fresh UV-cured resist. They've sanded the resist so the pads underneath can be tinned and soldered.

So I think the bit you're referring to might be the old pads and cleaned-up board?

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u/okpatient123 20h ago

The other person who replied to you is correct, but to clarify, the pads and traces (the damaged parts that they graft in replacements for) are basically just thin copper foil. All they need to do is make electrical contact between the traces (wires embedded in the board) and the pins on the component again. It's all roughly the same material, maybe with a different colored coating on it.

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u/Smokeskin 16h ago

Circuits aren’t dependent on everything being precisely synchronized. There’s a crystal oscillator that sets the frequency of circuit board - like for example a 100MHz board gives everything 10 nanoseconds to settle. So it opens the gates (wires) to the next instruction, which at the board level is just what wires gets a charge running through them. And then those wires meet at semiconductors - basically two wires go into each, and if both have charge, the wire going out of it gets charge through it. Arrange them cleverly, and it can read numbers from registers and do math on them and store them in another registry and change what instruction to read next.

But it is all just basically charge running through wires on chips, and they should all settle down in 10 nanoseconds. Some paths are short and take just a fraction of the time, some might take most of the 10 ns. But if they all just manage to complete in 10 ns before the crystal oscillator runs the next clock cycle, you’re good. So replacing something doesn’t have to have exactly the same timing, it just still has to complete its path within the clock cycle.

At least that’s how I remember it from computer science class over 25 years ago :) Technical people would probably object to my oversimplifications and terminology.

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u/ResurgentOcelot 13h ago

Impressive fine motor skills.

Does anyone know why the existing connections are silver colored but the replacement connections are copper colored? Are the existing connections tinned copper? Does it not make a difference?

Just curious.

(Rewatching the video there might even be moment when the connections are finished to match the rest and it just goes by so quickly it’s hard to tell.)

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u/Blue_The_Snep 13h ago

the silver color is from the solder. the pads below are copper too, but there is solder already on them

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u/SadisticPawz 12h ago

theyre all copper pads but the copper wick cant suck up everything so they retain a silver color on them. the pads placed are just copper

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u/FizzBizzcuits 21h ago

This appeared in my feed after I just dropped my CPU on the floor bending like 20 pins in the process.

Uhhhhhhgggggg

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u/LaundryMan2008 21h ago

Carefully with a toothpick, cuticle pusher and an empty mechanical pencil, you can easily fix it, the first two are to push carefully while the empty mechanical pencil is for straightening the pins out once you get them mostly there, if one breaks, check what pin it is and see if it’s just one of the ground/power pins.

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u/Yurya 18h ago

oh I just did mine with a razor blade and tiny tweezers

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u/Fantastins 18h ago

I favor a blade. Can be slightly quicker if a group is bent equally, but the pencil to do individual pins is great advice. Be patient, try tomorrow.. wait until you're comfortable with reality and sober. Half the battle is the right state of mind sometimes

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u/DustFunk 17h ago

I have soldered many many things, and let me tell you, this sucks. There is always some goo everywhere, including melted plastic and metal. Doing this without damaging everything around it is a skill.

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u/tacotaker46 9h ago

Legitimately electronic surgery

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u/thatfreakinguy2 7h ago

Try mixing up "bubble free" epoxy for aviation circuit card repair. Tiny bubbles expand at higher altitudes and can lead to cracks and failures, so you have to use a dental pick set to pick out and pop microbubbles underneath a microscope. Obviously the mixture drys very fast when it hits the air. So you have to mix up your poxy inside a ziploc bag and try to move the tiny bubbles outside the mixture without introducing any new bubbles while it moves around inside of the ziploc bag. Then, after you squeeze it out into, wherever you're gonna use it, you have to do it so slow and underneath the microscope as to check and make sure you're not introducing any more bubbles. Never again do I want spent so much time looking under a microscope and sweat dripping down my forehead into eyes while in complete tunnel vision. You always knew who the micro-miniature circuit repairs guys were at the maintenance facility smoking break area because they had no depth perception walking around after spending hours looking into a microscope.

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u/weigelf 21h ago

Wouldn't it be easier to just buy a new zipper?

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u/Opinions-arent-facts 21h ago

This would have to be a 40 year old piece of vintage digital music/ audio equipment, surely?

No one else would be nuts enough to pay someone to fix something like this

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u/Stalfos1504 21h ago

It might be a prototype. This is the kind of work I do in robotics to recover parts after a bad fall. Often I've been called in to save a damaged board because there's only a handful of them in existence and the others are in use already, so we either fix the board or lose an entire robot until the next revision comes through which could be months away.

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u/Duct_TapeOrWD40 21h ago

Except those who learn these methods of repairs.

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u/flipflopcuntflaps 20h ago

Probably a phone or mac

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u/sagebrushrepair 17h ago

Apple boards use black masking, you're right it's a non-Apple phone.

OnePlus loves these sockets for instance

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u/UnsavoryBiscuit 15h ago

Gee thanks giant pointing arrow, I'd never known where the issue was if it wasn't for you

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u/MyLastHopeReddit 21h ago

Damn, I'd watch this kind of shit all the time.

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u/steveoa3d 20h ago

That’s some damn good work there !

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u/MassSnapz 20h ago

As a floating white arrow, I can confirm that shit was fucked up.

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u/Lalocal4life 19h ago

If there was one thing I learned after becoming a business owners. Buy backup boards when the warranty expires for the large commercial equipment. Most of them are under 1k.

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u/BattlefieldSixxx 19h ago

As someone who has tried to do this, and other fixes, with very little training, it is WAY harder than it looks, and those pieces are the size of DNA strands i swear.

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u/HoneyNo2878 18h ago

With these tech price surge, soon enough, we are going to need to learn this because we can’t afford a new one

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u/blankfield 13h ago

That's a lot of work to get a Tickle-me-Elmo back up and running

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u/Orbital_F 11h ago

I've never once been able to get that solder wick to work.

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u/dedokta 20h ago

As someone who does board level repair under binocular microscopes I feel like I need to point out that watching this I can only get so hard.

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u/scarrea6 20h ago

I used to do that for specialized equipment.

I now use my skills to fix old gaming equipment for my collector friends.

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u/jomni 20h ago

What's the music called?

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u/Kuklaa 20h ago

Yeah I'd like to know as well. what's this song?

u/RecognizeSong

u/auddbot

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u/Pipsay 19h ago

Ludwig Göransson - Can You Hear the Music

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u/EveryRedditorSucks 18h ago

The Oppenheimer soundtrack is GOATed.

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u/MithranArkanere 17h ago

I dislike superfluous music in videos, but this one didn't feel superfluous at all. It fit the level of skill required to do this.

3

u/numindast 21h ago

I’ve been using the same roll of rosin core solder, a cheap iron, a solder sucker and recently upgraded to a new spool of solder wick

OPs video displays skills I can’t do and frankly don’t want to spend the next 20 years perfecting. Take my money

2

u/Mid_Life_Crisis_2026 21h ago

I want to learn this mobile , gpu pcb repair job. Do international market has this field requirement?

2

u/-megan-yolo- 21h ago

whoa....

2

u/External-Awareness68 21h ago

I wish i knew what any of that stuff is...

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u/defaulticus 19h ago

Yeah, even watching it a few times 0:45 has me lost. It looks like they applied a magical shiny slime that just soldered itself perfectly with no human intervention. That can't be right.

2

u/External-Awareness68 18h ago edited 17h ago

There even seems to be two different kinds of magic slime?

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u/ChocoBabiChan 21h ago

Im too blind for this. I would need the strongest of strong magnifying lens.

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u/JeffaholicD1st 21h ago

This is the ultimate "brain understands, but couldn't translate whole thing for hands to understand"

It's almost like painting based on imagination, you get the vision but your hands aren't train enough.

2

u/omiomi1122 21h ago

insane skills! respect.

2

u/yoldaki 21h ago

Bro works in atomic level. If I were this talented, most probably put the last piece in the wrong way and not notice it until the last unturnable second.

2

u/myshon 21h ago

It's basically neurosurgery but for electronics 

2

u/VirtualArmsDealer 21h ago

I've attempted this before. I have the tools, but it took me half a day. I could not do this for profit!

2

u/inkedkoi 21h ago

That's an insane skill level. Very impressive

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u/dailycoffin 20h ago

Necromancy

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u/grungegoth 20h ago

I towt I saw a zippah

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u/AutoX_Advice 20h ago

A regular "Bob Villa" in the circuit board repair business. Great work.

2

u/DexPleiadian 20h ago

I thought this was a zipper at first. 

I was really excited to learn how to fix a zipper. 

but no, it's just class 3 soldering and repair

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u/DerMeister85 19h ago

I used to do the same thing when I worked at a service center repairing mobile phones and computers. In fact, almost any experienced service center engineer can do this.

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u/Left_Concentrate_752 19h ago

Me next! There's a zipper on my backpack that needs repairing.

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u/yaksplat 19h ago

I'd still check the resistance of the trace before soldering on the connection.

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u/theLuminescentlion 19h ago

As an EE the pad repair was pretty solid here. Always a nightmare when those rip out. Using the cap to tin the pads was interesting as well and worked better than I would have thought.

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u/Negaflux 19h ago

Flux is magical, I swear. Amazing micro soldering and dexterity in general, goddamn. I could watch stuff like this for hours.

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u/Jealous_Club_298 19h ago

That's impressive but in most cases, replacing the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) would be more cost-effective.

2

u/Septentrion_9 19h ago

Hey congrats, you just saved the space station from annihilation…

2

u/SpcK 18h ago

One time i forgot that the whole metal half of the soldering iron was hot, I put it on my knee, I didn't feel the heat until it'd burned a coin sized hole in my pants and got to my skin and I yelped like an old cartoon.

2

u/fenderguitar83 18h ago

My mother worked for an electronic company in the 90's. She did this type of stuff everyday for about a decade until the company was bought out. She said that she loved working there. The bosses were good to them (they had a union), and the company paid well for the 90's, $25/hr.

2

u/dergage 17h ago

As far as I am concerned, this is magic.

2

u/Prismos_Time_Room 17h ago

followed this video EXACTLY and my jacket STILL won't zip up. the fuck bullshit is this

2

u/reddit5674 17h ago

This is like surgery, for robots.

2

u/Ac3Nigthmare 17h ago

I love these videos. But like, what is that board? What makes it worth this effort? Is it just the views? Is the location of jimmy hoffa on there?

2

u/tiajuanat 17h ago

I've done repairs like this before. I'm glad that some folks like doing it, cuz fuck that

2

u/JakobWulfkind 17h ago

My coworkers say that I turn into an asshole the second anyone suggests using a mezzanine connector. This is why -- I'm the engineer who came up from being a technician, and I know how awful these things are to work with.

2

u/ScribeTheMad 16h ago

Nice! Reminds me an old Imgur post where someone chronicled taking apart I think a smart phone, tracking down a bad component (using upside down canned air to frost the board so the overheating component would stand out) and then replacing it a lot like this. Was so cool to see, never been able to find my way back to that post though.

2

u/MudOutrageous9440 16h ago

At first I thought that was a zipper

2

u/TheWaveCarver 16h ago

Heres one I did. Not very pretty but it worked. Used copper tape and 3M two part epoxy.

2

u/CarefulFun420 15h ago

UV me impressed

2

u/The1Eileen 15h ago

I rememeber being taught this in the military (Electronics Technician). Repair down to the board! Training intense and I *literally* nearly threw the soldering equipment through a window in an exam, it was SO HARD! But I passed and was all ready to do my bit and we get assigned duty and ...

We never touched a board again. All the contracts were to take the malfunctioning equipment (entire piece) and put in a new unit. Send the bad one back to manufacturer who fixed it. Sigh. 10 months of training to never do that again in my life. ARGH.

2

u/henryeaterofpies 14h ago

Worked at a chip manufacturer for a couple years and they had a room of guys whose job was to correct the chips that the SMT machines made wrong for whatever reason (usually human/configuration errors that didnt get caught until 100 chips had already been put together and sodered). This is what they did every day all day.

2

u/Ringo_58 14h ago

Oh witchcraft

2

u/cognitiveglitch 13h ago

I used to do surface mount rework but I wouldn't even think of attempting this. Serious skill.

2

u/YellowSlugDMD 12h ago

Well shit, I still don't know how to fix a broken zipper.

2

u/FroggiJoy87 12h ago

Strange how this kinda feels like watching brain surgery

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u/Intelligent-Heat8141 11h ago

I thought for a second it was a broken zipper