What else can you do when you’re bored one day? Something useless and time-consuming, of course!
I challenged myself to desolder a microcontroller from an Arduino knockoff and reconnect it using 0.1mm copper wire to test my ability to solder and, consequently, my patience…
I removed the chip from the PCB using a hot air station and attached it to my work surface using Kapton tape.
After a lot of flux, and frustration, it was finally done. At the time, I only had a 1.2mm bevel tip cartridge (JBC C245710) which caused the inevitable accidental desoldering of the surrounding wires.
Attaching the wires to the chip was the easy part. I now had to repeat the procedure with decreased accessibility because the chip was soldered to the ground plane using a 2.54mm pin header as a spacer. Carefully poking the soldering iron between the wires to access the pads, I managed to complete the task.
