ish shoe goo conductive?
what about hot glue?
no shoe goo is a kind of rubber. hot glue isnt conductive either
That discolored stuff should be old solder that has been heated up for too long. Just wipe it off on your wet sponge. If that doesn’t work, you can always lightly scrub it off with a scotchbrite or something.
i glue my solders
Mine do that as well, I thought it was because they were cheap Wal-mart and Radioshack irons. so I waisted like 50 bucks on a good iron only to burn it the hell up. I found out that its just because the iron is overheating the only temp remedy i have is to brush the tip with a brass brush. It’ll clean the gunk off and it’ll hold solder but after tinning the tip it’s back to square one 
I’ve managed to hold it back by turning the iron off inbetween every solder joint, that way it doesn’t get too over heated but this isn’t sure fire because it still turns black after awhile
I disagree entirely, hot glue’s drawbacks far outweigh its benefits, at least when you’re gluing solder points.
In general, if a stick case is made in a way that a realistic amount of pulling on the controller cord is going to tear off solder points on the pcb, the case isn’t designed soundly.
Just my 2 cents.
You can use hot glue instead of lexan.
well thats the thing. my irons working temp is just under the temp that makes the iron do this(800degrees) i think im just going to buy a Hakko 936. those are really good for the price and all the ones i have seen dont do this.
Really? Because there is just the one drawback: it makes it harder to remove the wire if there’s a wiring problem. But if you’ve wired it properly prior to gluing, there is never a need to remove the wire. Is that a lot of drawback to you? And like others have said, sometimes the soldering points are extremely tiny or not really meant to be soldered to, so it’s hard to get a good, sturdy connection without some reinforcement. I have a feeling you stick to easy-to-solder PCBs, else you might have noticed this.
Let me see what we agree and dont agree on.
- Hot glue is only a detriment if there’s a wiring problem. I agree with this completely; if the board never requires rework, who cares. But, see #4.
- Strain relief is good; to prevent damage to the board in case of pulled wires, something to catch the tension so the tension isn’t on the PCB traces is good. I agree completely; maybe its neccessary, maybe its not, but done properly, its a great thing to have and hopefully never need.
Parts we disagree on:
3. Covering the solder points in hot glue acts as a strain relief. Nope, I dont buy it. Hot glue is SOFT, and frankly, not very gluey, just damn sticky when hot. Im having trouble finding the right words to describe what I’m thinking, but the idea is that hotglue there won’t catch the tension and keep it from the solder points/traces, but will instead provide only a little extra force for the tension to work against while it also works against the solder/trace. Since the surface area of the wire covered in glue is very little, the restrictive force of the glue is super minimal. Even worse, the wire and wire insulation isn’t porous; the glue wont work in like it would on wood, and the glue doesn’t work at the molecular level like superglue.
If you want to use hot glue as a strain relief, then glue the wires to the PCB somewhere else on the PCB, away from the solder points. None of the drawbacks, and will actually catch the tension without letting it translate to the solder points/traces, and the greater surface area contact with the wires means more stopping force by the glue. If the force tension is parallel to the surface of the board, then the glue provide a lot of relief. If the force tension is strong enough and perpindicular to the surface of the board, the the glue will ‘pop’ off the PCB before any force is translated to the solder points/ traces, and hopefully stopped before PCB damage occurs, AND if damage does occur, you can actually rework it because the solder points arent covered. Hope that makes sense.
- Once the board is hacked, it should not need to ever be hacked again. Severely disagree with this. Encasing it in hot glue to protect the board has the secondary function of making it not worth bothering to fix if something goes wrong. Over a long enough period, something will go wrong. I want the ability to fix whatever happens. Sticks arent, to me, disposable items.
i was actually thinking about that too, well where all the wires bundle up at would be the location where i’m thinking about laying a few drops of hot glue down for just incase of that unexpected tension
Shoe goo FTW!!! …I have never thought of that! (I use it to fix my snowboard boots for over 10years now!)
As it does not heat, it shoud be just fine to secure solder joints.
In what situation would you ever rehack a PCB?
And hot glue does work as strain relief, but I suppose it depends on how much you use. I usually put some hot glue over the soldered area and then I hot glue the wires down to the board.
Great reply… I’ve thought of all those things, and there’s nothing wrong with gluing at a different point than the actual solder point. But I also have to mention that removing hot glue is no impossible task. You can heat it up with whatever you want and just pull the wire off. I know for a professional EE such as you that may seem distasteful, but for a regular modder, it’s 1 or 2 minutes of inconvenience and nothing more.
The only time I have ever used hot glue on my contacts was when I made my arcade stick (see sig :wgrin:) because M$'s controller PCB’s are so shitty the slightest tug on the wire would rip the trace off the board! :mad: Normally it isn’t necessary as most boards are made well enough that wires stay in place.
I agree that it can be troublesome to remove if ever you have to but once you tested what you’re soldering and make sure it works ok, a small dab of hot glue to keep delicate connections in place shouldn’t be a problem.
Sometimes you can peel it off the board once it’s set but there is a danger in that too cause it could also rip the trace off.
Not really. My latest hack was a MadCatz micron (360), which uses pretty tiny solder points, for everything but the d-pad at least. There is no glue on that puppy.
This is half of it for me. I want to be able to fix problems if they come up. Also, you never know what the future will bring. The first two sticks I made, I ended up desoldering the PCBs entirely when I upgraded them to dual PCB sticks.
Also, as far as stress on the solder points go, if either of those two sticks were tugged really hard by the cord, all of the stress would go on the corners of the project boxes. The solder points are isolated entirely from tugging. The project boxes would have to be ripped out of 3/4" pine before the solder points were at all stressed. In a real world setting, most likely this would be from someone tripping over the cord; the cord would have unplugged from the game console well before any damage took place in the stick.
Recently i built a new stick box for my sanwa stick and happ buttons - one that is more compact and looks better - and I ended up rotating the sanwa stick 180 degrees which then changed the directions (up was down, left was right…). So, I had to now switch the wires on the board if I didn’t want to wire up a whole new PCB. Well, I could have just cut the wires and spliced them. This process of desoldering and resoldering tore off one or two of the joints.
You wouldn’t believe it but I actually still used the PCB – I soldered a single strand of the Sanwa wire to the microchip leg! I can’t believe it worked, but it did. I don’t expect it to last forever that way though…
Oh, okay. I suppose the whole hot glue thing is just a matter of taste… I’ve never had to swap PCBs from a stick, either, but I can see how the glue would be a big impediment for people that do swap them.