Category Archives: rework

Fixing Fake FTDIs

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If you know where to go on the Internet, you can pick up an FTDI USB to Serial adapter for one dollar and sixty-seven cents, with free shipping worldwide. The chip on this board is an FTDI FT232RL, and costs about two dollars in quantity. This means the chips on the cheap adapters are counterfeit. While you can buy a USB to serial adapter with a legitimate chip, [Syonyk] found a cheaper solution: buy the counterfeit adapters, a few genuine chips, and rework the PCB. It’s brilliant, and an excellent display of desoldering prowess.

Why is [Syonyk] replacing non-genuine chips …read more

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Halogen Lamp Abused for Desoldering

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[Moony] thought that it was unconscionable that IR soldering stations sell for a few hundred Euros. After all, they’re nothing more than a glorified halogen lightbulb with a fancy IR-pass filter on them. Professional versions use 100 W 12 V DC bulbs, though, and that’s a lot of current. [Moony] tried with a plain-old 100 W halogen lightbulb. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it worked just fine. Holding the reflector-backed halogen spotlight bulb close to circuit boards allows one to pull BGAs and other ornery chips off after a few minutes. Voila.

[Moony] reasons that the IR filter is a waste anyway, since …read more

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