Soldering Question

[KATowing]

Odd question but the light bar on my tow truck had a break in the solder and one of the LED lights stopped working. I have an iron but was looking for some tips or tricks on fixing this without messing it up to badly. DI is the slot in the pictures

 

[Eximo]

Not actually sure I can see the damage. Did that just break off completely?

If it did, you need to inspect the pads to see if they are still on the PCB, you can quickly try tinning them (whetting with solder/flux) Which you will need to do in prep for the connector. If not, you will need to scratch down to expose the traces nearby and splice in some bare wire to make contact with each pin on the connector. After that, hot glue to give it some strain relief and cover the exposed wire/traces.

As for the soldering itself, don't worry too much about bridges, if they happen heat it up again and try and let the natural flow separate the two pins. If too much solder is there, use some desoldering braid to wick up some of the solder (you could also use one of those little vacuum/suction tools)

 

[KATowing]

Not actually sure I can see the damage. Did that just break off completely?

If it did, you need to inspect the pads to see if they are still on the PCB, you can quickly try tinning them (whetting with solder/flux) Which you will need to do in prep for the connector. If not, you will need to scratch down to expose the traces nearby and splice in some bare wire to make contact with each pin on the connector. After that, hot glue to give it some strain relief and cover the exposed wire/traces.

As for the soldering itself, don't worry too much about bridges, if they happen heat it up again and try and let the natural flow separate the two pins. If too much solder is there, use some desoldering braid to wick up some of the solder (you could also use one of those little vacuum/suction tools)

Hopefully this answers you, so I activated the beacon and pushed the connector into place on the pads and the broken LED went on, There is still solder on the pads but not a huge amount it just looks like it was done cheaply and broke off due to vibrations. I checked the other 3 connections and they seem like they might suffer the same fate.

 

[Eximo]

Well, that means there is still something to solder to. Give it a try.

 

[KATowing]

Awesome thank you so much

 

[LinuxDevice]

Note that once this is fixed, if there is some sort of stress at the solder join (e.g., perhaps this caused the original break), or just constant vibration with a heavy wire acting as a lever, then you might consider a small dab of hot glue gun to reinforce it to prevent it from happening again (and hot glue can be removed if needed). Similarly, but stronger, you could also reinforce it with a small amount of epoxy (this is what I do with some micro-USB connectors).