Tried reflowing a motherboard with a heat gun and ended up melting a capacitor

I had an old Dell laptop from 2012 with a dead GPU and decided to try the heat gun reflow trick I saw on YouTube. Set it to 350 degrees and held it there for about 2 minutes, but I guess I got too close because a small capacitor next to the chip just bubbled up and melted off the board. Learned the hard way that those cheap infrared thermometers from Harbor Freight aren't accurate enough for this kind of work. Anyone else ruin a board trying to save a few bucks on proper gear?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_adam17d ago

350 degrees for 2 minutes right on the cap? Man I can practically smell that from here. Those cheap infrared guns are terrible for small components because they just average out the temperature over a wider area so you end up cooking stuff way hotter than you think. Ive seen guys on forums say you need a thermocouple taped right to the chip to get a real reading for reflow work. Its wild how fast things go wrong when the heat is that concentrated on a tiny part. RIP that capacitor its a total bummer when you're trying to save money and end up making it worse.

ben_ross5117d ago

Did you try preheating the whole board first @the_adam? That saved my skin once.