A600 Replacing Capacitors

[spannernick]

How do you remove them,specially the ones near the keyboard connector,you can't get a soldering iron in there..?

All I have is a soldering iron and wick,is there anything else I need..?

Would ChipQuik be any good.. [ Show youtube player ] I ask this cos the solder stay melled for longer so it would make the capacitors easier to remove..?

[supaduper]

Though you will have the purists here screaming at me , I get a pair of thin nose pliers and twist them off(Put some slight downward pressure with the pliers when doing this so you do not rip the pads off) then clean the pads with some Solder wick.
The others on the board you can use a hot air station or Hot tweezers if you have them.

[ajk]

ChipQuik doesn't really help much with capacitors, you'd still need to fit the soldering iron in the tight places. It's more useful when you have components with lots of legs/pins.

Twisting them off does work, but you have to be careful with how you do it. I generally use hot air, protecting nearby components with tin foil if necessary: [ Show youtube player ]

[Allen1]

For the price of a hot air station, is it really practicable to use any other method. Once you have a hot air station things like this is a much easier way to remove parts, hot tweezers tend to boil and pop the electrolyte in the capacitors due to the heating elements being so close to the capacitors body (not very nice).

Go and spoil yourself and get a hot air station and do not focus the heat one one area for too long ie move the wand from one side of the cap to the other to melt the solder on both sides, when ready the cap can easily be moved. You do not need high air output (too high will blast the parts off) OK

[demolition]

The twist method has worked well for me after recapping 4-5 Amigas. I destroyed a few pads by trying to melt the solder before I tried the twist method. With the twist, they all stayed in place. Just be very careful to not pull the cap upwards. Press it down a bit and rotate it 360 degrees until the legs snap. Now you can untwist the legs and have room to desolder them one at a time.

The hot air gun method also works nice. Use some Kapton tape to protect the keyboard connector and other things in the vicinity.

[jarp]

I used hot air station and there were no problems with keyboard connector melting or anything. Tin (leaded) seemed to melt before plastic so I can recommend hot air station.

Now, soldering new caps behind keyboard connector, that was quite a challenge...

[Daedalus]

Twisting off caps is all well and good until a pad comes with it. If the cap has leaked even slightly, the pad could be weakened and not able to stand up to the torque required to snap the legs off. Remember that the weakest bond will be the first to go with that method, and that could easily be the bond between the pad and the board.

For the caps behind the keyboard connector, soldering them on with hot air and solder paste is a good option that I've found works well. The keyboard connector and rear ports should be protected with Kapton tape or similar to give some protection against the heat.

As for the OP: I would strongly recommend practicing on something other than your A600 until you're confident you can do the job properly. I recommend an old graphics card or something like that that you can easily test afterwards to see if it still works. A basic hot air station can be had for £50 or less on eBay and will still be much better than a soldering iron or pliers for removing caps.