Soldering(?) help

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Ok so I'm doing some crazy experimenting with keyboards, and I need some advice. I have this little controller board from the inside of a keyboard, and it has these contacts which get sandwiched against the contacts from a flexible plastic circuit -- but I want to connect other stuff to these contacts now. They aren't bare metal; they are black (a coating of some sort I guess?):

http://incise.org:82/newpics/img_1927.jpg (the long repeating row of black rectangles)

So is it a good idea to solder directly to these things? What else could I do? I can solder, but not all that impressively.

edit for clarity: the black stuff, whatever it is, is conductive.

 

[ribbon13]

Given the size of the joints and traces... That calls for a magnifying lens if any solder job did. Do you have an extra fine soldering tip? silver solder? flux?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Hah, well, I have some old nasty soldering iron stuffed away somewhere, and some uh ... solder .. of some kind.

😛

But the thing is: would it be a good idea to try and solder directly to this black stuff? What is it?

 

[ribbon13]

I dunno exactly what they're called, but it's basically an electrical pad. You see them in game controllers all the time.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Ah yeah, that's right, I can remember seeing it in gamepads too. I'm thinking it might just be protective stuff to cover the copper, because copper will corrode when exposed to air, won't it?

 

[bazcor]

Those black tracks might be carbon traces, I once worked for a company that made these sort of things and the carbon traces were printed onto flexible plastic. Soldering would not be an option for carbon traces.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, You won't have any luck soldering to those. I have used "U" clips made from tin can metal to patch broken runs in keyboards. Maybe you can rig pressure contacts that way. Jim

 

[piromaneak]

Well, I don't know if you can solder that or not just by looking but if you try, when you reflow the solder make sure to put flux on it and get a quality iron with atleast 50W and don't hold it on there for too long... I burned a board trying to reflow some stubborn solder once hehe...

 

[CalvinHobbs]

forget it buddy..this black thing is carbon...you wanna repair it then get from older equipments and paste it on the used carbon...only metals can take solder...

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I'm actually experimenting with creating my own keyboard, not trying to repair anything.

And I found a good short term solution: http://altura.speedera.net/ccimg.catalo...000/213000/213066/Products/9167862.jpg

🙂