desolder and solder j9001 dp pwr connector: location, tool, skill requ

There are eight contacts! The two odd ones are for strength so when you press the cable connection it you don't lift the connector off the board (and ground). The six others are the meat of the connection.

These are hard connectors to de-solder! Between the wattage of the iron and the tips mass you are likely to lift a pad which you don't want to do!

The best way I have found is to first lift every so little the two top contacts so they are not soldered down. To do that I add a bit of solder! Yep! On both with a high wattage Iron then using Solder Wick I pull off all the solder while also lifting ever so slightly the contact so it is broken free one side then the other.

Now the tricky part! The other six! Here we need to desolder all of the points at the same time! If you don't you'll rip off a pad!

To do this we need to again add solder in this case we want to flood all of the pins with one blob of solder so all of the pins are wet and in a fluid state make sure the blob is not allowed to cool. At some point the connector should just slip off with very little pressure!

The key here is the iron needs to be a high enough wattage unit and the tip needs to be physically large so it can backup a sizable volume of heat. Think of it this way a 1/2 pint of water won't put out a fire where 20 buckets full of water will! Heat is the same the needed heat needs to be what the part needs to keep hot enough for the solder to liquify and long enough. A small SMD pencil tipped iron won't do here a tin smiths sized 150Watt is needed!

Personally, I find using a Hot Air station easier as I can heat the contacts without the needed mass of solder an iron would take. But you need to use care! As the air flow needs to be focused so you don't heat neighboring parts or cause heat damages hielding is important and skill!

OK, lets move on once the old part is off (who cares if its damaged as we need a new part)

You'll need to first clean up the area for any solder that got loose and clean up the pads using Solder Wick and or a hand vacuum pump (anti-static) I use a small vacuum pump with a hose and wand designed for the task. Using my smaller iron cleaning up the larger blobs and then I go over the pads with Solder Wick so all thats left is a smooth clean set of pads (all eight) I tin the pads of the connector so there is some solder (not much) so I can position it on the board and tack it down (the two ground contacts) then I carefully secure the other eight, making sure not to bridge any connections.

Use a good quality solder and paste flux - If you haven't soldered this is not the first thing I would do find an old dead TV or Radio to practice on. Desolder the small components and resolder them then go after the bigger ones so you get an idea how the irons size matters! A small pencil is what you need for the small stuff, but you need larger irons as the size of the contacts get larger as well as how the heat is absorbed by the copper on the logic board as well as the given components legs.