Help. Did I ruin my stick?

I broke this contact off when I was taking apart my mayflash stick. Theres still a contact on the bottom. Did I ruin my stick or is there a chance I can use the other side to solder on my buttons?

If all else fails trace the line going to the contact. You might be able to solder to a pin on the IC. (Square chip on the left) That is why you don’t use solid core wire on pcbs.

Not to be too critical but I think you have too much exposed wire where you soldered on to the pcb. You should only strip the part to be soldered. Now you have to get heat shrink tubing to insulate those wires from criss-crossing and causing a malfunction. I wouldn’t try to desolder since you might remove another contact.

If you removed a contact, your soldering iron is getting too hot, or you are leaving it on there way too long. Remember to heat both the pad and the wire and apply your solder at the joint of the pad and the wire, not pad, iron and wire (see Fig. 4 in the tips linked below). Use a temperature controlled soldering station - those soldering pen irons are crap.
Also, too much bare wire as the previous guy stated, and the wire even looks a little too large for the project.

http://www.elecraft.com/TechNotes/N0SS_SolderNotes/N0SS_SolderNotesV6.pdf

If you really have to do some very small soldering work you might even try to drill a tiny hole in the pcb where you are going to solder. By doing this you can push the wire through the hole and it will be much more stable as you solder it.

Can we see the back side of this pcb please?

The picture in the first post was from a tutorial. These are my actual PCB. The first being the underside, and the second the top which I messed up.

Could probably just clean the contact, put down new solder and attatch a wire.

Just trace it back to the chip like the above poster said and solder it on there.

Use the other side of the contact, that will definitely work!!! :smiley:
I remember during my early stickbuilding days, I wasn’t able to work with the mayflash pcb because they were too dang close to work with. The other side will give you the same signal.

Are you using a 15 watt iron? I hope you aren’t taking a 90 watt to a pcb.

Try soldering to the back contact. Strip a little on the other end of the wire and plug the pcb in. Now touch that wire to an appropriate ground. If the button activates then it works. If not you have to trace the little green line to the IC, or trace it to a place that looks like you can solder to the line.

Yep, you can use the underside for the Mayflash PCB. I’ve done this on my mods.

90 WATTS?! At this point I’ll have no pcb to work with since it’s going to melt everything. XD