repair burned track on motherboard
 

Hi,

Well, having a bad day and burned part of the PCB on 2 motherboards. I
was installing into an old Compaq case for my neighbor. I left a
mounting screw where it shouldn't have been. Two motherboards later I
realized the mistake. What I get for doing this at 11 PM after a long
day at work. Thankfully these were cheap PCChips boards so I was only
out 85 dollars.

Long story short, there is an isolated part of the motherboard that is
damaged. If I tape a small piece of aluminum foil to bridge the gap in
the PCB track the motherboard will boot up however the display flickers
and one can tell that the motherboard is not working so well. Any
advice on how to fix damage on the surface of a PCB caused by a short
like this? I don't want to simply try and return these motherboards
since I think this would be rather dishonest given my mistake. Not
much experience in small electronics repair so any obvious advice is
appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Tony

wrote:

Hi,

Well, having a bad day and burned part of the PCB on 2 motherboards. I
was installing into an old Compaq case for my neighbor. I left a
mounting screw where it shouldn't have been. Two motherboards later I
realized the mistake. What I get for doing this at 11 PM after a long
day at work. Thankfully these were cheap PCChips boards so I was only
out 85 dollars.

Long story short, there is an isolated part of the motherboard that is
damaged. If I tape a small piece of aluminum foil to bridge the gap in
the PCB track the motherboard will boot up however the display flickers
and one can tell that the motherboard is not working so well. Any
advice on how to fix damage on the surface of a PCB caused by a short
like this? I don't want to simply try and return these motherboards
since I think this would be rather dishonest given my mistake. Not
much experience in small electronics repair so any obvious advice is
appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Tony

How many traces are damaged? Trace repair can be done. But its not for
the feint of heart. The copper traces usually have a paint or protector
over it. You have to carefully scrape or sand this off on both sides of
the break to be able to solder to the copper traces. You then need a
pencil soldering iron with a very fine point tip. There are two ways i
do this. One is a direct bridge repair. The other is a wire bypass
repair. On the direct bridge repair, i find some find multi strand wire
and take it apart to get a single strand. If its coated, then i scrape
the coating off with a razor blade. Then i try to carefully tack it on
the the board on both ends with solder. Then i form fit it to the
damaged traces and try to flow solder on the whole length of the repair
wire. Note if there are many small traces close together this is dicey
because you can easily cause a solder bridge when you do the next one.

The other way is to use a small insulated wire to bypass the traces. In
the past, i have used wirewrap wire to do this. You can heat the ends
and tin them without stripping the insulation off. You then find a point
somewhere on either side of the break to solder on each end of the wire
bridge. The cleaning the paint off the copper applies here too.

If its a large ground plane type of trace, i save old clippings off
resistors or such to use as bridges.

If your NOT proficient soldering and have the right tools, i would not
recommend doing this.

Good luck.

Bob Urz

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wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

Well, having a bad day and burned part of the PCB on 2 motherboards. I
was installing into an old Compaq case for my neighbor. I left a
mounting screw where it shouldn't have been. Two motherboards later I
realized the mistake. What I get for doing this at 11 PM after a long
day at work. Thankfully these were cheap PCChips boards so I was only
out 85 dollars.

Long story short, there is an isolated part of the motherboard that is
damaged. If I tape a small piece of aluminum foil to bridge the gap in
the PCB track the motherboard will boot up however the display flickers
and one can tell that the motherboard is not working so well. Any
advice on how to fix damage on the surface of a PCB caused by a short
like this? I don't want to simply try and return these motherboards
since I think this would be rather dishonest given my mistake. Not
much experience in small electronics repair so any obvious advice is
appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Tony


If the aluminum foil fixes it, just solder a piece of wire between the two
points.

in article ,
at wrote on 3/13/05 11:24 AM:

Hi,

Well, having a bad day and burned part of the PCB on 2 motherboards. I
was installing into an old Compaq case for my neighbor. I left a
mounting screw where it shouldn't have been. Two motherboards later I
realized the mistake. What I get for doing this at 11 PM after a long
day at work. Thankfully these were cheap PCChips boards so I was only
out 85 dollars.

Long story short, there is an isolated part of the motherboard that is
damaged. If I tape a small piece of aluminum foil to bridge the gap in
the PCB track the motherboard will boot up however the display flickers
and one can tell that the motherboard is not working so well. Any
advice on how to fix damage on the surface of a PCB caused by a short
like this? I don't want to simply try and return these motherboards
since I think this would be rather dishonest given my mistake. Not
much experience in small electronics repair so any obvious advice is
appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Tony



Jump the damaged traces with very fine insulated wire and solder at both
ends (wire-wrap wire is good for this and probably available at Radio
Shack).

Use glue to tack down the wire to the PCB along it's length.

Jon