Vent: Reflowed a motherboard with a heat gun and toasted the RAM slot

Last Tuesday I was fixing an old laptop in my garage and tried to reflow the GPU with my cheap heat gun. Got too aggressive on the low setting and melted the plastic on a RAM slot next to the chip. Board was dead after that, wasted 2 hours and a $30 part I ordered. Now I always use kapton tape and aluminum foil to mask off stuff, lesson learned hard. Has anyone else fried a board trying to save one with heat?

2 comments

2 Comments

lilymurphy26d ago

4 hours of work with a rework station gone because I forgot to mask off a capacitor once. The low setting on a heat gun can still hit 350C easy, way too hot for plastic near the RAM slot. Kapton tape and foil is the move but even then you gotta keep the gun moving fast.

beth_sanchez4726d ago

Cracked my own board last year doing the same exact thing with a cheapo heat gun from Harbor Freight. Melted the plastic around the RAM slot so bad it looked like a melted candle, not a laptop board. I even had it on the "low" setting, which I guess is a joke considering how hot those things get if you hold them in one spot too long. Now I tape everything up like it's going into a nuclear reactor, plus I keep the gun moving like my life depends on it. Live and learn, right? At least we've got company in the "toasted a board while trying to save it" club.