The job of replacing a bad soldered-in chip is easy, does not require any special equipment, and does not threaten the board it's mounted on. Even a klutz like me has done it many times successfully.
All you need is a small pair of cutters. Cut all the legs of the bad chip near the body and remove the bad chip. Then if you feel like it you can unsolder each of the legs one at a time, clean the holes with solder wick and replace the chip. If you don't want to risk even that or don't have access to the bottom of the board, just solder the new chip to the old legs. On 8/22/2010 11:10 PM, Alexey Kats wrote: > I wholeheartedly agree that I did not consider this topic from the > perspective of warranty repairs (never needed it in the past since I > do always do it myself). > > But I had been in a situation in a different country where the cost of > a single IC (even though it is very cheap here in US) was close to my > TWO MONTH INCOME. And with the high chances of getting a fried chip at > the bazaar back then the trouble of installing a socket for almost > everything was definitely not sophomoric, amateurish, silly, stupid, > or unnecessary - it was a compromise to bring the cost of highly > likely repairs down (the cost of trashing entire board due to > re-soldering same IC over and over was unacceptable). > > Can it be installed? Yes. Can it work? Yes. Will it cause problems > mechanically for further assembly process? No. Will it be as reliable > as soldering? No. Will it be accepted for warranty repairs? No. Will > it decrease the chance of breaking the board trying to unsolder the > fried or mis-installed IC by an inexperienced builder? Yes. Will it > increase the chance of mis-installing IC? Yes. Will it be worth it? > Depends on your personal preference. > > Did I miss anything? -- Vic, K2VCO Fresno CA http://www.qsl.net/k2vco/ ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
