This:

Totally looks like this:

So, there was this problem with some capacitors (about 8.000 of them) that got damaged  (on a 50% chance) on depanelizing and we had to rush an emergency removal procedure across half the country. So important was this that I almost didn’t got to make a spare clothes bag! (and still, having to wear the same T-shirt for four days was not my best idea for making new friends out there, luckily, we haven’t got to summer yet.)

At first, we had to improvise for removal, since the boards where already mounted in their final aluminium frames, a blob of solder and side motion where out of the question, both for space restriction and possibility of flux tarnish.

So, I dremelized some soldering iron tips to look like this:

You might already know what the problem is. For those who don’t, copper has this habit of dissolving in tin, at about 6.8% at 400 ^oC. If you couple that with the fact that each capacitor added a small amount of tin. You end dissolving each tip in about two to three hours. Not good.

So, while we where eating the tips like there was no tomorrow, our purchasing manager managed to convince an OKI commercial agent, to lend us a tweezer soldering iron so we could finish the job.

 

These are so awesome!

At the end of the fourth day, we had this all over that green table you see:

It’s only a fraction of all the removed (either dessoldered or broken) capacitors.

I also had to devise another tool for a second process, but I’ll leave that for another post.