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Baking your motherboard might be the only solution! |
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Wednesday, 09 March 2011 |
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Next time you have an old laptop that dies unexpectedly or any electronic component that decides to simply 'stop' working then you may need to fix a dry joint. A dry joint is where two or more compoennts are no longer making proper electrical contact due to flexing of the circuitboard, continuous heating/cooling cycles causing components to flex or break. You could try to find the broken track or tracks and fix them manually using a very small soldering iron.
When you have a modern computer-style PCB which is multi-layered and has hundreds of miniscule tracks with thousands of connectors it can be impossible to even find the dry joint. A baking can sometimes be the only choice.
Most people do not have access to the professional facilities required to reball a computer circuit board, some people resort to an overall blow-over with a heat gun (dangerous and more likely to cause components to drop out). One trick that I use on circuit boards from laptops or desktops that have failed is to take the motherboard out of the case and place it in a hot oven for approx 5-6 mins.
200 degrees centigrade for -5+ mins is a good guide, best to do it for less on your first experiment, oven temperatures vary from front to back and from top to bottom of the oven. Be aware that some components like can electrolytic capacitors may not take kindly to being baked for a long time, so please do it for only short periods.
All circuit boards from computers have components that were placed on the board when hot and even the plastics are built especially to survive a baking. The baking helps reflow the solder on any joints that have hairline cracks or dry solder joints. It has personally helped repair several computer PCBs that I own but clearly it may not work with all problems as some faults cannot be fixed by the application of a little heat.
Bear in mind that depending upon the quality of the component it will use varying solder quality which may have varying flowing temperatures.
Do this at your own risk! - One of my motherboards was ruined when I overcooked it...Don't blame me if it does not work.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 04 May 2012 )
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