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First post, by markot

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I have some old motherboards with bad capacitors. These motherboards are also physically broken so I have no plans to really fix them, but I have been trying to desolder bad capacitors.

But I can't get the metal to melt. I have this model of Weller soldering station. Is this soldering station suitable for this kind of work or what may be wrong? I also have two different kind of soldering tips.

62637-293-whs40-weller-juotosasema-40w.jpg

Reply 1 of 9, by Harekiet

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Preheat the area of the board you wanna desolder with a heatgun, use a big tip, add some solder to your trip to increase heat transfer and even then the weller might just not have enough power.

Reply 4 of 9, by vlask

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markot wrote:
I have some old motherboards with bad capacitors. These motherboards are also physically broken so I have no plans to really fix […]
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I have some old motherboards with bad capacitors. These motherboards are also physically broken so I have no plans to really fix them, but I have been trying to desolder bad capacitors.

But I can't get the metal to melt. I have this model of Weller soldering station. Is this soldering station suitable for this kind of work or what may be wrong? I also have two different kind of soldering tips.

62637-293-whs40-weller-juotosasema-40w.jpg

Had something similar. Its useless, since almost everything from 2003 on isnt using lead and need higher temperature to heat. Using old style 100W soldering gun for removing and also replacing all capacitors. Sorry dunno how its called in english.

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Reply 5 of 9, by trodas

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Transformator soldering iron?

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Reply 6 of 9, by brostenen

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Buy some solder-wire with lead in it and apply some on the solder iron.
Then heat the item up with this tinned iron.
Once it is warm enough, it will all melt and you can suck it all up with a desolderwig.
Or use one of those tin sucker devices. (hope I spell correct).

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Those cakes make you sick....

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Reply 7 of 9, by shamino

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It's all about heat transfer. Old solder, especially lead free solder, won't be very receptive to getting heated by the iron. As others have suggested, add some leaded solder to the joint, this will make it much easier to melt. The solder should also contain flux in it, which helps to clean up the surface of the joint so it takes heat more easily.
I don't know how much experience you have with soldering, but if you don't have much, then make sure you understand how to manage the iron. The tip should always be kept clean and tinned. Depending how powerful the iron is, you might also need to wait for it occasionally to build up some heat before you apply it to a joint. As soon as the iron touches the joint, all the heat is lost from the tip and it needs time to recover.
Most people find that chisel style tips transfer heat better than conical tips. A larger tip will have more thermal mass which allows it to melt joints more easily.

If that's an unregulated 40W station then I think you can get by with it, but if you do this very often you might want to get a temperature controlled station of higher wattage. I wouldn't recommend a high wattage unit without it being regulated though.

Reply 8 of 9, by SquallStrife

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Iron heat is one thing, thermal mass is also important though.

Most capacitors on motherboards are likely to be power filter caps, which means they will be connected to large copper planes within the PCB, and all the heat gets sucked out of the iron before the joint heats up.

You need an iron with a high thermal mass, so the temperature at the tip doesn't drop the moment it touches the joint.

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