New SFF mod in the works that needs 200W of power with no standard PSU. I've got a 200 DC-DC power supply from Mini-box and they're biggest AC-DC brick at 110W but that isn't going to get it. I need more pow-ah. There are 2 sources for 200W power bricks that I've found, the Dell DA-2 and the Xbox 360. The Dell DA-2 is giving me no love with the DC-DC power supply. Apparently it's a known problem over at the AVSforums. So that leaves the Xbox 360 and it's proprietary plug. And we come to the subject of this post, I need that plug receptacle off the Xbox 360 motherboard (its a trashed one that I got off ebay). Normally I'd wail on it with solder, a solder sucker, and my soldering iron cranked to "11" but my success has been so-so doing it that way. Given the problem that Langer had, I didn't have high hopes. Enter one of these purchased from The Game Train It cost me about $65US including shipping. The digital gauge on it says its putting out about between 800-900C cranked. Not sure if I buy that but I can't argue with results. It melts regular solder like ice. I mixed some regular solder on the back of the pins to get everything flowing. A solder sucker and a few minutes later. Not too bad for a first time. The plastic certainly took some heat. I mucked around with too much at first but its yards better than my soldering iron attempts. Cleaned up the solder bridges Closer…. Now I need a bigger solder sucker. I'm going to try to pull all the caps etc off next. Hints & tips from you re-flow experts appreciated.
Adding flux to the joint before soldering really helped me with some tricky (and I thought) unsolderable joints. heatguns are great if you don't care about the state of the board afterward!
Thanks ModMinded, I'll try it with flux next time and I've got a few motherboards for parts scavenging that I am itching to try my big heat gun on. Thanks capnPedro, I have tried desoldering braid but it didn't work as well as this for me. Maybe I'm doing it wrong? I would like to change it to a PC circular connector (8-10 pin @ 6amp/pin) but haven't found a decent source yet. I found a couple of leads on ebay on Russian military surplus but nothing compact enough. Any ideas? Something like this:
Thanks kaujazz. That's pretty close to what I'm looking for. I'm just going to have to gut up and order amphenol one.
BTW, I don't think you're using the braid badly. I had tried the braid as well. As long as its clean braid (unused) it should work but if the solder won't melt, you'd still out of luck... hence the flux!
@Modminded: Gotcha on the flux. I'm going to have to stack all these techniques side by side via video for critique. Just need the time now To close out the issue of the connector, I ordered an amphenol circular 97 series connector (97-3102A-18-8P) this morning from Newark (Farnell) this morning. Hoping I can make it work as its slightly bigger than I wanted.
The easiest way to do it I've found is to use a cheap copper de-soldering strip. Or that Awesome Soldering Sucker from HAKKO.
