First LOR build

[therealbigjim]

I put my diy kit together (ordered in the Sept sale). Then I took it apart, re-touched the solder joints and now I have 12 out of the 16 channels working. So far I have found some loose lugs. Any one have a suggestion. I had to remove one side of tracks because I mistook the black mark for the pin one dot. (old eyes) I did not keep track of where they were put but I think I may have damaged some.
edit...Looking at the trouble shooting guide it was the optos that I had in upside down....not the tracks.

[jbitzer]

therealbigjim wrote:

I put my diy kit together (ordered in the Sept sale). Then I took it apart, re-touched the solder joints and now I have 12 out of the 16 channels working. So far I have found some loose lugs. Any one have a suggestion. I had to remove one side of tracks because I mistook the black mark for the pin one dot. (old eyes) I did not keep track of where they were put but I think I may have damaged some.
edit...Looking at the trouble shooting guide it was the optos that I had in upside down....not the tracks.

Do yourself a favor and head out to Radio Shack and get the 40W desoldering unit with a bulb before you attempt to remove anything that has been soldered to the board. I leaned the hard way by trying to remove components without the correct tools. I think it was around $12 and well worth it even if you only build one controller.

Jeff

[Dave Pursel]

I've built 12 boards and never soldered any optos incorrectly. But just tonight I had to replace a bad triac. I have a manual solder sucker and a heated soldering iron sucker with a plunger. I ended up using the last small piece of copper braid tape to remove to get the solder out of the holes on the cb. Next trip I make into town I'm picking up some more copper braided tape that's used for desoldering. I'm beginning to love this stuff as it seems to be a much better method of getting solder off of the board and components. I'll let others chime in as to if the optos will need to be replaced because of incorrect installation.

Dave

[therealbigjim]

I do have a solder sucker and it was a life saver, but the problem was several cold solder joints. I now have all 16 channels.....

[stanward]

what's a "track?"

[TJ Hvasta]

I think he meant triacs.. If he posted the comment on a smartphone, it probably auto-corrected "triacs" to "tracks".

[PMC]

for decades to me the best way to remove solder is the copper braid, for the longest time...over 35 years now I would strip the jacket off of a spare section of RG-59 cable pull out the white/clear inner dielectric insulator then use that braid as my de-soldering mop.