PCB Repair

To repair the damaged parts of printed circuit boards, you will need a few tools and materials:
sharp or flat-blade screwdriver, copper foil tape, welding gun, heat gun, scissors or craft knife, fountain pen, cotton swabs and alcohol wipes, tweezers, paper clip.

If you find that a component on your PCB is not working properly, you can follow these simple steps to remove and replace the component:

• Use a heat gun to heat the faulty element for a few seconds.
• Remove the element with tweezers. If it doesn’t come off easily, heat it for a few more seconds.
• If the PCB pad is thermally damaged, carefully remove it with a sharp knife. Take care not to damage any nearby components when removing the damaged element from the board.

After removing the damaged pad, continue to use a sharp knife to remove the solder on it. If using a knife is inconvenient for this more delicate operation, you can also use a pointed screwdriver or fine-grit sandpaper.

No matter which tool you use, you should end up with the copper wire fully exposed, with no solder remaining, and looking clean and shiny.

Once the damaged copper wire has been removed and the area cleaned, the copper foil tape can be applied.

The copper foil tape should overlap the existing copper lines and cover the existing vias and part of the surrounding area.

At this point, it is necessary to carefully solder the joints where the new copper foil tape is connected to the repaired PCB copper wires. Here are some relevant tips and warnings:

• Copper foil tape melts quickly at soldering temperatures, so make sure you can do this in one go.
• Heat as little as possible, and must be done carefully and quickly to reduce the amount of heat applied.

Find a hard tool with a round tip, such as a pen or other simple tool. Press on the area you just finished soldering and rub hard to make sure the copper foil tape is firmly attached to the entire pad area. After the area was heated, the tape was still sticky.

Use this trick to locate the vias, then use a paper clip or other similar tool to make the holes.

After completing the above steps, the PCB is repaired and ready to accept the new components selected.

The next process of soldering components is familiar to everyone. As before, heat as little as possible. The new solder joints between the newly applied copper foil tape/pads and the copper wire may not be quite secure yet.

Using scissors or a craft knife, carefully cut the copper foil tape to size to complete the repair. It’s important to note that just-repaired solder joints may restore functionality to the PCB, but the pads, copper wires, and connectors will never be as strong as the previous board.