"Jon Elson" wrote in message
...
Cursitor Doom wrote:

Hi all,

Anyone got any tips on how to avoid the unpleasant situation where you
try to de-solder a part on an elderly board and end up removing more than
just component leads? Most of the stuff I work on is at *least* 25 years
old and things start to get fragile.
OY! It depends a lot on the quality of the board, and then how much heat
it
has been exposed to, over its life.

If the chip is no good, I scribe the leads with an X-acto knife, running
down the whole row, and then JUST BARELY snap the leads off from the body.

A Swan & Mortem scalpel is a little more precise for the smaller ICs,
Usually I shear the pins off at the header - but you have to be careful not
to slice tracks underneath.

With the old standard pitch DIL packages, a decent quality pair of side
cutters were sufficient to nip the pins off flush with the header.