This tutorial is to help people whos Q6 encoders have gone to sh*t over time are now unusable. Mine started scrolling in random, erratic directions, and even after reflowing the solder joints and cleaning the encoder with alcohol it was still dysfunctional, so I set off to replace it.

Supplies

The Q6 uses a Kalih CEN652812R01 as its encoder, which just so happens really really hard to find. You either have to buy 6,000 or buy from AliExpress and gamble on shipping times (mine took 4 days, could take 4 months) encoder on ali, stock may vary

You'll also need:

- Hot air gun/hot air soldering station

- Solder sucker

- Soldering iron & solder

Step 1: Access the Encoder

The first thing you have to do to crack this thing open is to take off the clear plastic front cover.

The front is held on with light adhesive so just slide a knife or spudger or something under it and it'll come off no problem.

After that make sure you remove the LCD ribbon in the bottom right. There is a black tab that needs to be slid up to remove it.

Then remove the four screws in the corners and take off the LCD and the front panel.

Step 2: Desolder the Encoder, Clean the Pads

The pads for the encoder are circled in the image, it's covered in flux and crap from me trying to fix it by reflowing.

I used a hot air gun to heat the encoder to high hell before it fell off. I'm assuming the ground plane is massive on this thing because the two larger pads take a very long time to melt. Once flowed however the encoder fell off no problem.

To remove the solder from the holes I found it easiest to use a hot air gun and a solder sucker. I tried with my iron and solder wick and all that but it didn't work, the pads remained sealed.

It takes some patience to get all the solder out but it's not too hard.

In the pictures, you can see the pads before and after solder removal.