–EDIT–
Here is a video of the repair process
— /EDIT —
I can’t believe how easy it was to fix my Virtual Boy display problem! And the best part is, all you need is solder, solder wick, and a soldering iron!
Just a side note, if you don’t already know, the FFC, or Flat Flexible Cable, is the thing that connects the main board of the VB to the display. I will use the FFC term a lot in this post, so it is good to know what the FFC is ahead of time!
Anyway, the back story is that I have been looking for a cheap and easy way to fix the display problem by only using basic tools (soldering iron, solder, solder wick) and easily obtainable and inexpensive parts. I didn’t want to use chemicals, or an oven, or anything else along those lines. So I bought a handful of connectors, and tried a few methods unsuccessfully.
In my experimenting, I found that the film backing on the FFC was easy to melt. It melted so easy that it seemed like I could just solder the FFC, pretending that the film was not on the back of it. It was my hope that the solder would melt the backing of the FFC, and that the backing would not affect the solder joint at all, because hopefully the flux in the solder would help keep the connection clean.
So I did just that, and wouldn’t you know, it worked!
The trick is that if you look at the display, you can see a strip of unmasked copper above the FFC and below the green soldermask. So I used this area to lay down some solder. Once I got a little ball of solder laid down, I used the solder in my hand to push the ball onto the top of the FFC (the soldering iron was used to keep the ball of solder flowing, and the ball always was partially touching the copper traces of the PCB). I never touched the iron to the FFC, because I didn’t want to move the copper traces on the FFC. Anyway, I rolled the ball around for a while to melt the backing, and then I took out my soldering wick to clean up. To use the wick, I always pulled from the FFC to the display, making sure to go parallel with the traces.
The first time I tried, I pulled the soldering wick perpendicular a few times to clean up the big blob of solder I had, and this caused a few of the pins to shift. So fixing this board took a little longer, and a magnifying glass :\. But the second time, everything worked really well, and I was done within 3-5 minutes.
Then, the moment of truth. I reassembled the VB… and it worked!
If anyone is interested, I can make detailed instructions. I never saw this specific method on this website, but the only difference is that I am using solder to remove the backing rather than sand paper, or chemicals. The only real benefit of making a tutorial would be to have everything in one spot, along with soldering techniques (being many people have never done any fine pitch stuff, or have never used solder wick). So let me know if anyone would like to see a detailed tutorial.
Oh, and thanks DogP for your insight via PM!
-Matt
I finally got around to posting a video. It is pretty basic, all I have is Windows Movie Maker, and I figured if I didn’t post it now then I don’t know when I would. So theoretically I can post a better video some other time but realistically I wont.
Here is the YouTube link.
I don’t see myself making a PDF like I originally said. The only thing I may add is instructions on taking apart the Virtual Boy to the beginning of the video (or maybe make that a second video).
I attached a high res picture of the finished solder joint. You can see some flux from the solder splattered onto the FFC and PCB, but other than that I think it looks pretty clean (but most importantly it works!)
Any comments are welcome, and if you have any suggestions for how I can improve the video / the video description on YouTube, then let me know!
-Matt
Attachments:
Cool… thanks for posting that video. Couple quick questions… what temp is your iron set to? I was surprized to see with the amount of time the iron was on the cable that it didn’t cause the cable to break at the bend (where the cable connects to the PCB). That was the problem I had when I tried that before. My display may have had more stress there than most, or I may have had my iron too hot though.
Also, what’s the holder that you’re holding the PCB with (model, where to buy, etc)? I keep thinking about getting one of them, but was never really sure if it’d be helpful… but that looks really useful. Heh, and I recognize that exact copper sponge… I love that thing 🙂 .
Also, I may be wrong, but that desoldering wick looks like the cheap stuff from MCM (Tenma)… I’ve got some of that stuff, and if I could make a recommendation, it’d be to get some NTE stuff. I picked some of this up locally: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0206736 , and I can’t believe how much better that stuff works than the Tenma stuff. I always avoided wick because that Tenma stuff didn’t work well, but I bought that NTE stuff when I needed some wick for work, and I was blown away how much better that stuff worked.
And yeah, that doesn’t look too bad, although for comarison, here’s a pic with the FFC eaten away w/ chemicals and then soldered… a little cleaner IMO, but of course more complicated, and if they both work equally well, then it doesn’t really matter 😉 :
DogP
RunnerPack,
That is the best video I could get with my digital camera. I tried a few times but that’s the best I could get. I was thinking of making a camera mount that I could attach to my vise, but this is probably the only thing I am ever going to record as far as soldering goes.
I used flux one time, but I found it did not really help, the flux already in the core of the solder is enough (plus I am pretty sure the desoldering braid has flux in it as well). And yeah, I used a lot of solder, so that is probably why I got the flux spots everywhere.
I thought about adding sound but I just didn’t. Just didn’t know what to say, and I figured if I waited until I came up with something, I would never upload the video.
The picture I have of the finished solder joint was actually done using a scanner. I put the part in a plastic bag, and then put it on my scanner.
Oh, and I don’t have any more broken VBs, so I can’t make any more videos.
You are probably right about using too much solder, using an inch or more of braid just to remove it is probably a good indicator I used too much solder, but eh, it worked.
