On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 19:22:18 GMT, art
wrote:

That's nothing. I got a better story..

Dad bought a pair of walkie talkies back in 1964 when I was 5 yr old,
I found the soldering iron (always watched him fix the tv sets for people)

and removed every part on the pc board from one of the wt !

When he got home, I thought he would whip my butt but instead
he gave me a big pat on the head and was proud of my work !

art

Too crude. I've been into radio and electronics since I was about 15
years old. Back then, my main source and supply were the WWII surplus
electronics stores and the garbage bin at the local radio/TV repair
shops. Fishing tubes out of the trash and retesting them in the tube
tester was my main source of tubes. Henry Radio's dumpster supplies
much of collection of RF related items.

Circuit boards were often found with the parts I needed, but
unsoldering was tedious. Eventually, I hit upon the proper method. I
clamped one edge of a circuit board into the bench vice on my fathers
workbench, heated the solder side with a propane torch, pulled back on
the board to apply tension, and released the board when the solder
sorta melted. Parts, pieces, and solder would spray all over the
place. I could empty a board full of IC's in about three tries.

The problem was that I wasn't very careful about where the solder
"spray" went. When my father arrived to use his workbench, there were
components and solder blobs imbedded in just about everything. We
spent all day cleaning up my mess. I was later informed that I could
have burned the garage down (but I doubt it). I also wasn't into
wearing safety glasses and was lucky not to have blinded myself. At
the time, extracting parts for projects was deemed more important than
simple survival.

On orders from the high command, the propane torch became off limits,
and I was back to tediously removing components one at a time.

When I eventually went to college and later employment, I again used
the propane torch and springy circuit board method to extract
components en mass. I wore safety glasses and caught the parts in a
large cardboard box.

However, as components and boards became smaller, the method no longer
worked. Small thin boards just don't have the spring in them, and SMT
parts just don't have mass to be easily launched. Components on both
sides means that one side gets ruined in the process.


--
Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
(831)421-6491 pgr (831)336-2558 home
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS