Rocket track soldering help

Can anyone help with soldering 2 pcb boards foe me I'm willing to pay i tried to solder the transmitter board and fried one gold pad and torched the regulator with my iron Ive lost my first rocket so far, I am building a new one and don't want to fly without rocket track. If any one can help that would be great. you can reach me here or my email is [email protected] Thanks Charles

can you send a picture of what was fried? most of these things are fixable with a little care.

Yeah, a few pictures will help. Also, where are you located?

Here are a some pics and I am in Houston Tx

when I was trying to solder one of the Capacitors the iron touched the resistor don't know if you can see it in the pic but I know it will need to be replaced and one of the gold pads that holds a capacitor witch you cant see because its so small looks like its gone I tried solder wick to remove the solder from the pad with no luck. These parts are so tiny even under a lighted mag glass it was very hard just to pick them up with tweezers, my eyes aren't that good any more my soldering skills are worse. If anyone can solder these boards for me I will be happy to pay them, I will pay to ship both ways. Thanks Charles

I normally am pretty brave taking on repairs on pinball gear when other shops turn it down. I'd need to get a closer look on my full sized monitor. It all depends on what is missing for pads/traces.

Surface mount stuff that size can be tricky without the right iron.

You need the right solder, too. I ship Eggfinder kits with Kester 245 .020", it's a no-clean 63/37 alloy that will melt if you look at it the right way. That plus the right flux (Chip Quik sells little 2 ml tubes for about $2 each in 6-packs) goes a long way towards success with small SMT parts. The OSHPark purple and gold boards are pretty, but I think they're kind of hard to solder on. Tinned boards are much easier to solder, and it's easier to see solder bridges on conventional green boards.

I'm not a huge fan of their purple solder mask either.

It looks like you could use some more flux on the pads. I don't see anything obviously damaged with the board. I just think you need to touch up a couple of pads and it will probably be fine.

How big is the tip of the soldering iron?

But I get real excited whenever I get a purple padded envelope in the mail...

cerving said:

But I get real excited whenever I get a purple padded envelope in the mail...

Click to expand...

The envelopes were cool...

yeah, their envelopes are pretty cool.

Those voltage regulators look like they will operate fine, unless you have tested them and found they aren't working. It's also unlikely that you damaged a resistor just by touching it with the iron they are one of the more resilient components. IT looks like your board just has a bunch of flux on it, use some isopropyl alchohol and some q-tips to clean it off. I usually just push extra soldier onto the soldier mask where it will usually just fall off of. You can also put a small stranded wire in some flux and use it as a small soldier wick if need be. A good regulated iron with a pointy iron tip goes along way for soldiering surface mount stuff like that.

I could fix it for you, but shipping it to me and back wouldn't be very cheap.

Just be happy OSH park boards do have a soldier mask, I've had to do a fair amount smt stuff on a milled boards with no soldier mask and it definitely makes you appreciate having it.

Don't feel bad, I messed up my first RX board by connecting two pads that I couldn't unconnect. Second one went much smoother though.

Make sure you use a head magnifier, good light source and a fine tipped iron. They can be pretty cheap. You don't have to use a pricey soldering station.
A shallow glass pyrex cake pan with sides can help avoid parts loss sometimes too. Best of luck. Kurt

Like Cris said you need the right solder. I would help you soldering yours together but I am scared I might mess it up.

I can do it if you want. I just put together two minis and that was easy so this should be no problem.

Thanks to every one for all the advice, some one has soldered my boards and the system works great. Just want to say thanks to them here in the forum. Thank You

yeah! glad to hear it is working.