18:34 “Be careful if you've got nearby passives of course.” 18:40 Desolders C8. :D

Greetings from Russia. We have a popular method: Take Wood's metal (~ 42 % lead, ~ 40 % bismuth, ~ 9 % tin, ~ 9 % cadmium. Melting point is 68°C) or Rose's metal (~32 % lead, ~ 50 % bismuth, ~ 18 % tin by weight. Melting point is 95°C) Rose is more popular, since it does not contain cadmium and is less toxic. Apply at 400-450 degrees on lead-free alloy So you get an alloy with a melting point of about 110 degrees. Sometimes it is even inappropriate to heat the part in addition, it falls out by itself. After, MANDATORY remove the resulting alloy from the place of soldering, it is brittle and fusible. Thus it is possible e.g. SO8 desoldering chip without hot air. Chip Quik SMD Removal Kit for poor :-)

C8 is the most famous component on board

The composition: 49% Bismuth, 18% Lead, 12% Tin, 21% Indium. This makes a eutectic alloy that melts at 58°C.

This stuff is amazing! I use it mainly to remove ribbon cables that are hot bar soldered directly to the board. Have not lifted a pad since!

btw, you can re use the chipquik balls! just use a brush dipped in flux, move into 1 big ball to re-use (with flux of course)

Its the leftover stuff from the T-1000. So it must be expensive.

Poor C8.

Its excellent in any workshop scenario,it removes not only chips but those nasty TO3's,transformers,coils or whatever do not desolder easily from thick pcb's.Very handy.You can use much less after some practice,retrievable bits can be used again and its all at low temperatures.GREAT.

Not bad at all, but the cost is astronomical!

I love this stuff. Been using it since the late 90's.

the trick is to melt the original solder so the two metals mix, and then after you can heat it up much quicker, and this combined with a hot air gun is amazing. there are tons of other "low melt" solder options, all at much lower price points

ChipQuik can also be useful for thru-hole repairs on multi-layer boards. With internal power and ground planes (and moron cad jockeys who neglect thermal reliefs), it can be next to impossible to remove snap-in caps and jack connectors without pulling the thru hole out with the component, further damaging an otherwise repairable board. Sometimes you just can't get heat into the solder joint faster than the power plane takes it away without burning the PCB, preheating or no. After removing excess solder with solder wick, a bit of ChipQuik and gentle wiggling makes it possible to pull the component out. Another use is getting all the lead-free solder out of smaller multilayer thru-holes. Occasionally you run into a thru-hole where the solder next to the power layer just refuses to melt. Apply a bit of ChipQuik to the pad, heat up a resistor lead with your iron, and insert it into the blob of solder. The lead pushes through the hole, and mixes the higer temp lead free solder with the alloy. It's then easy to melt all the way through the hole, and remove all the solder. ChipQuik is a great thing to have in an Altoids tin in your toolbox. After a bit of practice, you'd be surprised how long it lasts. And if you clean it off well with solder wick, any remaining residue tinned on the pads won't significantly change the composition of the new solder joint enough to cause a problem.

12:46 Made in Mexico flips the chip => TAIWAN

seriously thats one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

It also works well for multi-layer board through hole desoldering as well, if you don't have a vacuum desoldering gun. Even the cheap solder suckers have trouble with that.

Ah, thanks for that. Cadmium is a bit of a surprise. Sometimes used in wires to improve the strength.

I can vouch that this stuff works great. I had to desolder a 128 pin ultra fine pitch QFP from a donor board, clean it up, and reuse the thing on another board. I did it all without any damage to the pads or chip itself. And it was my first time using the stuff. So in the right hands, this stuff is worth every penny.

Just used it to change my first HDMI Port... Good Stuff!!

@18:45, say bye bye to C8

from an Amazon page (B+D enterprises): The composition is (Tin 12%, Lead 18%, Bismuth 49%, Indium 21%). The lead free ChipQuik version is the SMD1NL.

Great vid and thank you for the links to your other soldering vids at the end =P

I've done the same by purchasing a small ingot of CerroBend 158 (used as a filler when bending thinwall tubing), filing off some to get it to powder form. I then take the powder and pack it around the pins of the QFP and then, from the underside of the board, use a 150W PAR-38 incandescent spotlamp to heat the area. The board heats evenly, the alloy liquifies and the QFP slides right off. No iron involved. Using the PAR38 as a heat source and a toothbrush, the board and chip clean up nicely. CB (now CS) 158 costs about $25 for a one-pound ingot. If you have a friend who works in radiology, you can sometimes get the stuff from them as it's also used as Xray shielding for selective radiotherapy.

Great video, Dave!

It depends from the pcb structure also,if has ground plain layers and heat transfer zones the heat dissipates rapidly and not stays in the melted solder.

That's pretty impressive! I took a TDA2003V out of my CB last night. It has 5 pins and was a real headache to get out.

Dave: "I didnt have any ChipQuick..." ChipQuick: "Send Dave some free ChipQuick" Must be nice to be Dave.

To be safe I would use Kapton heat resistant tape around all the other surface mounted circuits to prevent that chip quick from rolling over to those areas.

This is heaven for use with a hot air iron, just lower the temp, no stress for the chip and little components around will not get unsolder. Since it's such a low temp, maybe you can even use a fiber brush to brush away the solder that is left on tracks.

I wonder how well it works if the chip has a contact point on the underside. (grounding or thermal...) I assume it would get to it a little bit and begin displacing solder. I might have to pick some of this up to find out!

great video, you sure the temperature of the iron wasn't too low for the chip quick to melt the existing solder?

How can you patent an alloy? At what point does another alloy violate the patent? If it has like 5% iron, 6% antimony and 89% other stuff for example and you manufacture an alloy with 5.2% iron, 5.8% antimony and 89% other stuff, would that be considered a violation? At what point does the proportion of constituent metals get diverse enough to render it "different" from a patented alloy, and who defines this limit?

Hi Dave can you do a demo about Huntron Tracker for board repair, thanks for all your videos, very useful!

lol watch for passive and then removed C8. great work love the show

For the smaller chip at 18:00, I can remove it with ordinary solder and flux...you just need to be quick moving around it to keep it molten...

Shame about cap C8 being dragged to its death. Brilliant tutorials as always, keep them up.

This stuff is similar to Cerrosafe except with a bit lower melting temperature. It is an alloy of Bismuth, Lead, and Tin. The way it melts and crystalizes as it turns back to solid is very similar. There is a company (CsAlloys) that adds some Indium to the alloy and has the melting temperature at (coincidentally) the exact same as this stuff 58°C or 136°F. I've used Cerrosafe to get a casting of the chambers of my handguns for reloading purposes. It costs about $20 USD for a 1/2 lb ingot.

@18:40 What happened to C8!? :-P

I'll check the RoHS compliance. On the other side, Im asking about reworking if this alloy can cause reliability problems since it breaks when bending and shows to be fragile and resting alloy in the pads can cause "micro-fissures if they re .submitted to mechanical stress and high frequency mechanical vibrations... (I don't know, this is an hypothesis)

Very nice Idea to remove chip with soldering iron 👌👍

Pre-warming to the board to 40 deg C would reduce thermal shock to the chips, may improve the molten working time too. The old way of doing that was a halogen encapsulated bulb (the ones with a flat "lens face" over the main envelope and reflector) under the board mounted facing upwards and maybe 100mm from the board underside. - fed gently to produce low heat from a variable supply to give slight warmth to the back of the board for a minutes or two. Don't melt things on the other side!

One can also use Rose's metal which costs around USD 14 inc shipping for 75g. from ebay

That looks useful, I wonder if you could remove QFP DRMos with it that has thermal pads under it. You would basically heat the IC to 220 degrees C and then the thermal pads would also desolder.

I use a low melt alloy comprised of bismuth, tin, lead and cadmium. It melts at around 158F. A one pound ingot cost me $10 on eBay two years ago. I just apply some flux and melt some of the alloy onto the iron tip, or if I'm removing something like a MOSFET or IGBT then I'll just hold it above the component and melt a few drops. Maybe it's not as convenient as something in wire form, but It's cheap and very effective. Also, I know cadmium is bad so I do plan on trying something without it soon.

I've seen it as an anti-corrosion coating on mil-spec connectors, for use in environments with lots of salts present.

It says tin, lead, bismuth, *indium* on the datasheet I found on Farnell. I don't imagine cadmium would be legal for sale in many parts of the world. Presumably it's the newer version of it if the old one did contain cadmium. Percentages are: Sn12, Pb18, Bi49, In21.

Dave, i've used the smaller and larger air nozzles with a 858D to remove a 304-pin QFP, worked a treat! (Smaller ones if you only need to heat up the pins, the larger ones i use if there's a freaking thermal pad)

I have a powerful de-solder gun with custom trigger for through-hole work. Good for sucking up big excess too. You need to make dead certain that they are before you pull the trigger if you know what I mean.

Dave, do it again but instead of using all chip quick, bridge evverything with 60/40 first then add little dabs about every 2-3 pins distance and let it mix in. Ive had the same bit for a few months now by using that method.

I use chip quik since 2 years. It is the best way for desold SMD chips without special equipment. Really!

This is useful for removing faulty bad components. I would not use it to remove components you want to salvage to use on another board as a replacement part. In this situation i would highly recommend the proper equipment. There are situations where this stuff is prefered over a rework station. Yesterday I had to remove a broke flat flex connector from a pcb which was highly populated on both sides with small surface mount components and BGA chips. I did not want to take the chance of dismounting the other components so my rework station was out of the question. I pulled the ChipQuic out my tool box added some flux and the connector came off in less than 2 minutes with no damage to the pcb.

The chipquick 63/37 .8mm solder is my favorite, didn't know their name was ubiquitous with SMD removal alloys.

Thank you so much.

Awesome! at timestamp 12:00 it looks like the four 'blobs' could have been flipped off clean by letting it dry a few seconds, and slapped the PCB upside down along that black connector on the side. Or did you want to demonstrate other things?

That's pretty impressive!

Cool stuff!

Yes it works , wonderful

amazing, never seen smd before, need the tools , heat gun, jigs, adjustable iron

hi, do u have any video, on how to test integerated chip, I searched ur videos, could not find one, please your advise will be helpful

according to the MSDS on digikey (product-detail/en/SMD1/SMD1-ND/304148) the proportions are slightly different, and the Cadmium is replaced by Indium.

Hi mate I enjoyed your video a lot now I'm gonna have my first attempt as well thank you so much

Thank you so much I will buy it.

Considering that it's expensive, can the solder blobs be reused for desoldering another ICs? Or does it get too impure?

I was left wondering if this paste is useful with the heat gun. My gut tells me that you can use the gun at a much lower temperature and melt onl the component where you applied the chipquik

I know this is a pretty standard way to desolder SMD IC's but couldn't shorting all the pins be a problem if there is a capacitor in the internal design of the IC which is not discharged? You could be sending high voltage back into all the other pins.

It seems likely to be Cerrolow 136 (49% Bi, 21% In, 18% Pb, 12% Sn), from the information I can find. The melting point matches, though the MSDS for ChipQuik's non-lead-free alloy (which is the one that has a 58° melting point) seems to imply that it contains silver and antimony, which Cerrolow 136 does not. However, the only information on silver and antimony is stating the hazards of said metals and that "Product contains one or more of these metallic elements in varying percentages", so it might just be unmodified Cerrolow 136.

Acording to its patent the allow is: Sn42/Bi57.6/Ag0.4 or Sn96.5/Ag3.0/Cu0.5 they have both listed

Great video! I have a simple question. First I do not know what I am talking about at all, so please bare with me:-) Would it not be possible to just use the soldering wig? You place the soldering wig on top of the pins and hold the soldering wig, totally still, then you are moving your iron on top of the soldering wig to get the solder to be absorbed, one side at a time, and when it is absorbed, you lift the chip?

Good video. Thank you.

At 10% cadmium, wood's metal isn't the greatest choice. Is Gallium metal an effective replacement? I know that it amalgamates with Al, but have no idea how it reacts with Sn/Pb solder.

I used this stuff for years repairing consumer electronics. I still have a tube of it .. this is a must have in your kit.

Thanks bro 👍

blimey! interesting video. noticed the damaged pad at pin ~35 before you pointed it out :D

Any good tips for SMD microUSB connector pins? (same size, maybe a bit bigger). At work, my supervisor tells me to crank up the heat to max (about 550) and then apply solder after almost burning the thing. I tend to rip the pads off the board, is it really because of the excess heat or is it that I just don't heat it up enough. I use a small amount of paste flux. I am no pro at soldering, not at all.. Using similar Pace at work as you are.

Could probably reuse it, but it would surely get more impure each time, and the melting point would get higher.

The alloy is probably woods metal which contains cadmium,bismuth,lead and tin.The type we used at work had a melting point of 70c.

I would imagine this would absolutely make the surface mount joints more brittle, leading to the notorious failues of broken connections on surface mount chips (especially GPUs in laptops), where board flexing is common in normal use.

I also like the solder pump better than solder wick, I find it cleaner, but with a solder pump there is a larger risk of accidentally damaging very small traces.

I'm a train wreck at removing SMD chips so could certainly do with some of this.

Hi, i have a question about this one. If i used it to desolder a chip of mine, will it affect the ability to resolder the chip in the future? And what do i need to know the most, before using this one carefully?

Indium or Bisphmut alloy. Can get similar result adding 60/40 regular solder and flux and using a hot air gun.

Great Video, Thank's!

they consist of an alloy containing gallium and indium, pure gallium has a melting point of approx. 30 ° C however, caution is advised with gallium, because it destroys aluminum alloys

Damn that stuff looks good. I'm really tempted to buy some now.

I've seen this kind of alloy before, it could either be gallium or indium. Indium being very popular around my area.

Woah, you lost C8 at the end there! That's some great stuff for desoldering!

Ahh! Thanks. I was not aware of that.

How bad is that smoke for your health? was that only from the flux? or also from the alloy(cadmium and stuff) ? and again a nice tuto!

Been using chip quick for years, mostly for PCB's with sensitive pads where excessive heat would cause catastrophic damage. I will use it in conjunction with hot air station to minimize direct iron heat to pads, then clean pads and repaste for hot air replacement.

I got an alloy here that melts at 62C. It is not made for soldering but the composition could be similar... It's made of Indium Bismut and Tin.

Neat stuff. For cleaning the solder alloy off pads, I've also found that the isopropol wipes (or cotton swaps) actually works really well, significantly better than solder wick. Heating the alloy-covered pad up with the iron at low temp and using a cotton swab I've gotten gold-plated pads cleaned up enough to look just about as good as new.

That Blu-Tak is REALLY blue! Nothing like the UK one.

Dave @ 18:46 Capacitor C8 is no longer on the board, it is now in your soldering iron tip..

It's made of some Galium or Indium alloy, which are metals that melt in your hand.

Would it be better to use a 3-pass method to avoid desoldering other parts perhaps? Pass 1: apply ChipQuick solder at the lowest possible temperature, so the iron is too cool to desolder anything. Pass 2: reheat the applied ChipQuick at about 300 degrees to mix it with the original solder. You're only using one hand here, and there's no time pressure, so you should be able to move the iron more accurately and carefully this time. Pass 3: use hot air gun at a medium temperature to heat the chip on all sides and lift it off. Hot enough to melt ChipQuick, but again don't allow it to desolder other parts. It's very hard to move accurately when you have to work the iron on all four sides and try to pull off the chip at the same time.

I agree. Normal nozzle and some good flux. This method is less expensive and more PCB friendly i guess.

I reach late to this discussion but any way: about the alloy used, by reading the MSDS ( or SDS) sheets of the product, you can get a clue about it's composition, in this case It uses tin, silver, bismuth, antimonium, indium and copper. About patents covering known alloys, the patents office can issue a patente if, and paste from the article I've read: "For example, an alloy composition with specified levels of alloying additions or a compound having a particular chemical formula may be sufficiently new and different to warrant patent coverage. However, the possibilities do not end there. Although a particular alloy composition or chemical compound may be known, the alloy or compound may possess some new characteristic or property. This is particularly true when it comes to metal alloys. Alloys containing a new type of metallic phase or combination of phases may be patentable. The microstructure of an alloy may be sufficiently new and different. For instance, an amorphous microstructure may be patentable, where only the crystalline form of an alloy was known before. Controlled crystal grain size or orientation may represent patentable features in some cases." www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-0004.html

good demo, though it has to be said you need to really clean off the chip quik, as that blob demonstrates its very crystaline and can behave like a dry joint.

18:48 There went C8 lol. As you said, be careful with nearby passives. If this would have been an important board and you don't have the schematic or the value of the cap, it would be an painful issue.

Odd question . . . If you had some copper wire that you could bend to wrap the perimeter of the pcb then plug onto a heat gun. Would that work, or would ot not get hot enough?