Precision soldering service in Las Vegas?

[Synomenon]

Anyone in Vegas know of a place that can solder things for peoples' projects? I'm trying to add an audio-out jack to my Garmin Nuvi's mount. I know where I need to solder the 3.5mm jack's wires to, but it will require precision soldering because the points the wires need to be soldered to are so small.

I tried doing it on a spare mount and ended up destroying it.

Here are pics. of the circuit board of the mount:
http://roerby.dk/pictures/garmin/P9180058.jpg
http://roerby.dk/pictures/garmin/P9180050_mod.jpg

 

[Eli]

Cake.

I'll do it for 25 bucks.. lol

Edit: Find other things to practice soldering on. You will get better.

What do you mean by destroyed it? What wattage of soldering iron are you using?

 

[Howard]

Scrape away the green lines of the PCB where the copper underneath runs to the exposed pads. Then you can solder directly onto the new exposed copper. Those round ends look perfect.

 

[Synomenon]

Originally posted by: Eli
Cake.

I'll do it for 25 bucks.. lol

Are you in Vegas?

Thanks for the tip Howard. I tried that and still messed it up. I have another spare mount though waiting for this modification.

 

[Ika]

If that's a 3.5mm jack, those pins don't seem too bad... can't be any worse than an SSOP28... that chip is a bitch. I could probably do it; too bad I live a few thousand miles away. I'm sure there's an ATOTer who's more experienced in soldering than I and lives in or near Vegas.

 

[Jeff7]

I've read about people doing soldering using solder paste and a toaster oven.

Google for those words together, and good luck.

 

[Eli]

Pics of the "mess up"?

Unless you're ripping pads and traces up, I doubt anything has actually been broken. If it's a mess, get some desoldering wick, clean it up, and try again.

 

[Howard]

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Yucky/P9180050_mod_1.jpg

Simply tin those pads, flux some thin-gauge stranded copper wire, tin the ends of that, and then melt the tinned pad and wire end together. Don't know you can screw that up. What power soldering iron are you using?

 

[Synomenon]

I'm not going to use a surface mount type 3.5mm jack. I bought a couple of different ones and all were too big to fit inside once mounted. I simply took a 3.5mm extension cable and cut off the male end. I stripped the black outer covering and then stripped the red wire and white wire inside. The ground wire is bare. I'm just going to have the female 3.5mm end dangling out the side of the mount like this:

Here are images of what it looks like with the "dongle":
http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/5819/dscn3104kb5.jpg
http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/7880/dscn3112jy1.jpg


It's a variable temp. / wattage iron. I screwed it up when scraping the circuit board and when I drilled a hole to put the wire through the board.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi
I'm not going to use a surface mount type 3.5mm jack. I bought a couple of different ones and all were too big to fit inside once mounted. I simply took a 3.5mm extension cable and cut off the male end. I stripped the black outer covering and then stripped the red wire and white wire inside. The ground wire is bare. I'm just going to have the female 3.5mm end dangling out the side of the mount like this:

Here are images of what it looks like with the "dongle":
http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/5819/dscn3104kb5.jpg
http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/7880/dscn3112jy1.jpg

Yeah, sounds like a good plan.

Scrape the PCB coating off the pads(round things with a hole through them), and tin them.

Tin your wires, and stick them through the holes, solder, and take off any excess with flush snippers.

Wait, are there holes in those pads? Or even PCB coating? It seems like the two mod pics are different.

Maybe I'm just tired.. Anyway... tell us what wattage of soldering iron, and what sort've tip you have. If that checks out, you just need more practice soldering.

It's a good skill to have if you're into this kind of thing.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: IsLNdbOi

It's a variable temp. / wattage iron. I screwed it up when scraping the circuit board and when I drilled a hole to put the wire through the board.

Don't use anymore than 20W for this.

Ah. Yeah, drilling holes in a PCB is hard. Do you have a set of PCB drill bits?

I use a dremel.

 

[Synomenon]

Yeah the tiny little dots at the end of each of the blue lines:
http://roerby.dk/pictures/garmin/P9180050_mod.jpg

I think Howard added something to the pic. to make those points more pronounced, then re-uploaded them in his last post above.

They don't actually go through the board to the other side. They're just dimples on the circuit board. I thought about getting a really tiny drill to drill the holes through, then just sticking the wires from the 3.5mm dongle through the holes, but I don't have a drill bit that tiny. Also, isn't the metal layer that I can solder the wires to just a thin layer of metal over the board? Would the connection still work if I drilled the holes all the way through the board and stuck each wire through each hole?

I do have a fine point tip for the soldering iron, but the points are so tiny and close that I found it very difficult to get solder on all three points w/o getting the solder to touch.

 

[Howard]

Yes, I added something to the picture - exposed copper. You get it by scraping off the green stuff.

I wouldn't recommend drilling a PCB with a normal drill bit.

 

[Synomenon]

I'll check Radio Shack later on today to see if they have special tools to drill through circuit boards. Would drilling holes through those points and inserting each wire into those holes then soldering, work?

 

[Howard]

No. There is no exposed copper to solder to.

 

[Synomenon]

Thanks again. So the best way to do this is to carefully scrape the surface of the circuit board to expose the copper at those three points, then solder the wires to the exposed copper at those three points.

 

[Howard]

That's correct.

Well, that's how I would do it, and I've done it on some other PCBs. Your PCB should be the same in that the copper is directly below the green layer which can be easily removed with a knife (don't use your nice knives). Don't scrape too hard or too far or the copper will get screwed up.

 

[Synomenon]

I scraped my "test" cradle's PCB with an old xacto knife and it worked pretty well. I'll try soldering other small stuff again to try and get the hang of soldering small stuff. I still don't feel comfortable doing it though and would rather hand it to someone who can do it well. I've already botched my spare cradle and don't really want to spend $30 on a new one.

 

[Saulbadguy]

Should be plenty of people in that area that could do it for you.

 

[Synomenon]

Anyone on ATOT live in Vegas and could do this for me? I'd pay of course.

 

[Synomenon]

Bump...

 

[alfa147x]

i cant do it, but maybe if you were willing to mail it?

 

[Synomenon]

I could mail it to anyone here who knows how to do this.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: Howard
No. There is no exposed copper to solder to.

If he scraped the PCB coating off the pads, and drilled through the PCB with a drill bit the size of the dimple, it would work just fine. That's what I would do. I hate soldering wires flat to pads. It works, but it looks like shit.

But it doesn't really sound like that's an option.

 

[Howard]

Soldering to pads works fine for me, and I can make them look neat.