Hello there lads. Have you ever changed a Nswitch usb port?
I was searching the internet for tips but couldn't find any specific information like temperature or things that can go wrong. Technicians are apparently selfish with their knowledge, so here I am sharing my mistakes in hopes of learning something from your experience or helping someone in need.
What I learned myself from damaging a banned switch I used for educational purposes is the following.
Things needed: ( tools for opening the switch itself omitted)
- Solder wire, pref low melting point.
- A nice solder iron
- A hot air gun with station, the one with temperature selection.
- mid or good quality reballing flux. Not the rosin one as the solid one can have very low boiling point and we're going 300+ C?
- Tin suction pump.
- solder wick
- tweezers
- helping hands or a board holder.
- medium to advanced knowledge. Not gonna lie this is extremely difficult for me and I still don't master it. I don't recommend this for basic level technicians
Some things I learned from my mistakes are as follows.
Temperature for removing. I used 320 - 350? Celsius and it got off without apparent damage. Before using the hot air I mixed some of my leaded solder with the original one using the iron and removed all of the solder on the mountings of the usb port with the pump. I've seen some technicians add low temp to the pins themselves but I advice against this as this can help get off the front pins easily but the back row can't be seen, thus its removal can't be made any easier, and the difference in strenght needed can cause a pin to get damaged. We don't want that.
after removing the port I then tested the switch without the usb port and it still worked. It was slow and painful but if you follow my instructions up to this point its ok.
After having removed the port I removed all the original remaining solder with the wick and the iron using a lot of flux and mixing some leaded tin.
Its very important to have the mounting brackets as clean as possible, presenting the replacement usb C port and verifying that it sits in place flat.
I tried different methods. Tried reballing solder paste, tried tinning the pins at the base and... I broke something maybe from all of the heat stress or maybe it could be avoided with aluminum foil or polyimid tape. Maybe The heat damaged the cpu solderings? I suspect the solder paste caused a short circuit. I should have used a multimeter to check for shorts but mine was damaged :c. In any case the one method I think maybe worked is tinning BOTH the pins at the replacement usb c port and the pins at the motherboard with the iron then blowing hot air.
With the iron at the lowest reasonable heat and a lot of flux at the new port I tinned both set of pins. 200? C apparently worked, had to apply pressure until I felt the tin melt. then I removed the hot air and kept on applying pressure with my tweezers until I was sure the tin was solid and then some 10 extra seconds just to be sure.
Everything looks good up to this point but the motherboard is damaged so I'm not sure I'll keep on studying on this subject and maybe editing this post.
