In article , "Michael Kennedy" wrote:

"mc" wrote in message
.. .
If you can borrow a temperature controlled iron, preferably one in the
45-50watt region, with a fairly broad tip, you should be able to do the
job
fairly easily.

What is happening is the large area of the multilayer PCB, combined with
the
rather large track area, is siphoning away the heat from the tip and
chilling it. The iron is not temperature controlled so cannot compensate,
so its temperature drops below the required heat to melt solder.

If you keep trying with your iron, you will soon destroy the socket,
board
and PCB pads- the job must be done quickly with a hot iron. I have
replaced
several laptop power connectors and feel that a cheap hobbyist's iron in
the majority of cases would be quite inadequate.

I agree. When I said earlier that 30 watts is plenty, I hadn't quite
realized he was wanting to remove something with a substantial amount of
metal that needs heating up.


I've had success doing what you want to by using the largest iorn I can find
and working really fast so that you don't destroy the board. I'd immagine a
45 - 50 Watt iorn would work well. Just don't leave the iorn on the board
more than a few seconds, just long enough to liquify the solder and add some
more. You will cook those solder pads if you use too small of an iorn or
take too long with a big one!

After working with the Weller rework station, all the other irons seem
way to large for the hand. The Weller being smaller in size is not small
on watts. 80 watts. Pleasure to work with.When I need big watts, i get
out the 250 watt Radio Shack gun.


greg