I personally use a 15w iron for all of my work and never have that problem. I will sometimes use the braid, but as you probably know…it can jack the hole up due to the amount of time the iron is on the hole.
When I desolder on holes that are so close together like this, I just place the iron at the tip of the wire going through the hole. Once the solder has melted, I just pull the wire out of the hole. This helps me ensure that the iron never touches the board.
Since I know that I am going to replace the wire back into the hole, I have no need to remove the solder. When it is time to put the wire back through the hole, I will place the tip of the iron (i use a very fine tip) at the center of the hole. Once the solder has melted, I push the wire through and remove the iron. Using this method, the iron is never touching the trace and is only on the hole for maybe 2-3 seconds. In addition, since the solder was already present, there isn’t really a need to add more solder except maybe 2% of the time.
I also setup the boards on clips so I can rotate the boards in any position and have both hands free to work with.
The chimp is the same as the PS3/PC cthulhu and imp board combined into one board.
However, if you want to play gamecube/wii, ps2, and xbox 1, the chimp won’t do that. You’ll need the MC cthulhu board and imp board.
I haven’t installed my chimp board into my TE stick yet, but I did install an imp and cthulhu board into my other TE stick and predict the chimp board to be an easier installation.
As for purchasing chimp board, you’ll have to get it directly from Toodles, but it’s in beta right now.
the tip is kinda wide and the wattage is too high for small electronics work (imho). a friend of mine had this and i played around with it. sometimes i had to hold the tip on a panel for 5-10 sec intervals for it to work. well…since the tip is so wide, the rim sat right on the border of the socket and scorched it.
No sir
Stop no and don’t :no:
That’s what I got (and have since trashed) when I started practicing on old mobo and mice, total waste of time for what you would be working with. Get a scrap pcb and practice with the braid
For situations like Kaytrim is dealing with with the small unlabelled holes, there’s no way I’d be using braid on it. The diameter of the hole is so small that the surface tension of the molten solder will hold it in place and keep the braid from sucking it up. What I usually do if I have to rework those is heat the bottom with a regular iron (adding either more solder or flux if the solder is difficult to melt), pull the wires out, then stand the board up vertically with a pair of helping hands. Get a solder sucker over the hole on one side of the board ready to go, then apply the iron tip directly to the hole, and hit the button on the solder sucker. If you leave the iron on too long, or put too much pressure on it, that’s when the pads will overheat and come off.
The only time I’d even do that is if I needed to put something with more than one leg through, like caps, chips, whatever. For just wires, I wouldn’t even bother trying to remove the solder from the hole. Just trim an inch of insulation off of the wire, tin it, heat the pad from the bottom and push the wire through. When the wire’s in place, solder it to the pad as normal and trim off the extra wire.
Toodles is right, if your just replacing a single wire, there’s no point in using braid or a sucker. Hell unless it’s something like an IC you shouldn’t need to remove any solder at all pretty much.
for single wires I just heat it up and pull the wire out, then for the solder that’s left on the pad I carefully move it around with the iron until it spreads out away from the hole and then just replace the wire…using the solder that’s left on the pad.
If I do have to use desoldering braid, I prefer a hotter iron simply because it allows for quicker melting and manipulation. The ones I’ve been using for my mods are here at work since we’ve got a fuckton of different tips (wide chisel tips ftw), and the irons are set at like 800 so that we can work with lead free solder, so the radio shack stuff gets sucked up in like 1/4 of a second.
Maybe my problem is that I am pushing the wire through the bottom and soldering at the top. I still need a new iron though because I keep burning out the tips on this one. I need one with a small tip too. Can anyone make any recommendations? (with links please) Has anyone used this one from Gamingnow.net?
I still would rather use some kind of connector in this spot instead of soldering to the board.
Just a note: I’ve got exactly 2 Chimp betas left. Once they’re gone, you’ll have to wait until they’re all polished and sent to retailers before you can get another.
When you make the kits for resellers will there be assembly instructions included? I only held off on getting a beta kit because you made some sort of reference about laughing at us if we had to ask which way a chip went in. I’m confident in my soldering skills, but not in assembling something that I have never seen before without a diagram or instructions of some sort.
Thanks for the reply. I just want PS3/PC and was about to order a cthulhu board and imp board from lizard lick… however, if the beta for chImp is proceeding nicely, I’d love to do that instead. one board instead of two? sounds like a dream.
Not to be a persistent annoyance, but does anyone know how close to leaving beta and entering production the chImp board is? I’m not in a hurry, but I do have a bit of vacation time coming up around the holiday and was going to use part of that to attempt to mod my TE stick.
All cthulhu boards now are assembled with screw terminals, right?
Assuming the new chImps won’t have those when Toodles starts selling…
People using chImp beta boards, how large are the solder points? Someone mentioned earlier, in response to me, that it was possible Toodles may have made the pads (?) slightly bigger on newer Imp boards?
I hope to have put together an Instructable like the Cthulhu instructable, but Im not 100% that I’ll have that done by the time the chimps are out to resellers.
If I get the all clear from the folks getting beta v2 boards that have been selling this week like Spektrum, then I’ll get them packaged and out to the resellers, 3-4 weeks I’d imagine. I doubt they’d be out before Christmas, but maybe just after.
And again, this is all predicated on getting the all clear on the betas going out now.
The four points where the USB jack or USB cable is soldered to are larger; I think those are the only ones that changed.
Problem is the most external thru-holes on the Chimp board are too close to the mounting holes. I mean, even without any connector it appears that the screw heads will go over the thru-holes. It’s a design flaw.
I have one question that has been kinda lingering in my head for a while. So the Cthulhu board is pre assembled and doesn’t require soldering. When hooking up to like a Sanwa stick from LL that little plastic female plug adapter, Does that come with the board or would I have to order that from somewhere else?
(Still saving up for all the parts just to build a stick for my PC, All Sanwa parts)
Do you mean this: “JLF-H” or “Wire harness” photo
They most definitely do not come with the Cthulhu, since those are only for some sticks, and the cthulhu is made to work with all sticks (within reason). You need to check with the retailer you purchase your parts from to see if one is included with the stick you buy; if it doesn’t, then I guarantee they have them for sale separately. If the stick you use doesn’t use one of those harnesses, like say any American style stick or Seimitsu LS-32 (NOT LS-32-01, those use harnesses) or Sanwa JLW, then you’ll have to wire up your own using 0.187" quick disconnects and wire.
