Failed attempt to wire bridge a connector to a motherboard

I originally (In another instructable) had successfully soldered a flat flex cable to the motherboard of an ipod. However, I decided to add a little more solder for strength, and bridged a connection. I thought I could accomplish the same thing with tiny wires. In the end, the assembly was too fragile to handle the manipulation. I successfully connected one wire of the motherboard to one wire of the connector before they started to pop off, and I gave up.

I am posting this for inspiration, so you can read it and see what you can do, if you are faced with a similar situation. If I had to do it again, I think I could have been successful by using a hair-thin wire, and directly connecting the flat cable to the motherboard.

Read on.

Step 1 Preparation of wire

Here I tin all of the wires. Tinning is important. Tinning is where you strip back a portion of the insulation (I usually stripped back 1/32" for this tiny project) and dip it in flux.

Flux, when heated by the soldering iron, becomes acidic and cleans the metal so that solder will stick to it. Solder will not stick to dissimilar metals without flux, even with good cleaning. You need flux.

So, I dip the tip of the wire in the flux, then touch the tip of the soldering iron to the wire. A tiny puff of smoke is seen, but really there is no difference in the way the wire looks.

Before I soldered these tiny wires to the connector, I made sure even though they were tinned, that there was flux on them when I touched them to the connector. This improved solder flow.

So technically the wires got a flux-dip two times, once to tin, and another time to solder. Flux will often act as a buffer between two solders, to help them stick, and makes a better, stronger connection.

In the previous instructable, I showed how I used a dremel cutoff wheel to shape the tip of my soldering iron.

Comments

[klee27x]

That looks like 26-28AWG wire. You would get a vast improvement using common 30AWG wire. Also, once all the connections are soldered and tested, you can hold the wires down with a dab of hotmelt glue to prevent stress. Don't put it over the joints, in case you need to rework things. Just a dab on the insulated part of the wire, near the joints to hold them all down, so the wires flex at a place where they are whole, rather than the stripped part right next to the joint. In fact, you can make your own custom ribbon by gluing a bunch of prestripped wires onto a scrap of paper, just to hold the ends together. That would help prevent the wires from reflowing and coming off as you go.

[tundrawolf]

Thank you for that. I never even considered hot glue, I was going to use silicone (Takes a while to cure). I saw some 30 something gauge wire ad Radio shack, it looked pretty promising, however it was magnet wire and lacked enough insulation to cause me to worry about it. Eventually, I will try to search for the connections that ripped off elsewhere on the motherboard, but for now I am just fed up with the whole ordeal. God willing, if I find the outputs of those connectors, I have a shot at making this actually work (Which would be a miracle!) Thanks for that insight. I really appreciate it.

[taterkiller]

that last update must suck for you

[tundrawolf]

Yep.