Any micro electronics experts here?

[BigdummySteve]

After a year of sterling service my garmin charge pack has packed up. My fault, it’s been plugged into my dynamo charger for all that time with a usb lead. Knowing how fragile these hateful connectors I had used sugru to seal and protect it.
Moisture obviously got in and the bloody thing has died due to electrical corrosion, I’ve removed it but unfortunately the solder points are beyond tiny.



Anyone got any suggestions?

[sean_iow]

Would one of those shops that fix phones and fit new screens etc be able to do it? There's one near my work called ifix? I think they're a national franchise.

[BigdummySteve]

Would one of those shops that fix phones and fit new screens etc be able to do it? There's one near my work called ifix? I think they're a national franchise.

That’s not a bad idea, my original plan was to solder a cable directly onto the board but it’s those micro connections, you need a hot air soldering iron and possibly a microscope.

[Boab]

You can do it without hot air, but you'd need a flux pen and a magnifying glass...

[ledburner]

You can do it without hot air, but you'd need a flux pen and a magnifying glass...

what the flux is that?
is that the USB micro connector, just getting an idea of scale. I used to do that work but eyes fail me now.
Am I seeing bared/exposed copper track/traces or old Sugru. it the corrosion you candlt see that may be the issue.. under larger components..

[BigdummySteve]

The brown stuff is the old silicone which sealed the micro usb aperture, the four largest solder contacts just secured the usb to the board.
Fitting a new connector is beyond my skill set/eyes and equipment.

[ledburner]

The brown stuff is the old silicone which sealed the micro usb aperture, the four largest solder contacts just secured the usb to the board.
Fitting a new connector is beyond my skill set/eyes and equipment.

Do you have (the remains of) the original Socket?
so you can purchase the exact replacement, from Foxconn or other manufacturers?

[substandard]

You need a flow wave soldering machine to do tiny manual stuff like that, used to use that sort of kit when I was an apprentice , there must be people who do phone repairs as other have said that will repair stuff like this. You can buy similar tips for soldering irons that would do it with careful use of minimal solder.

[substandard]

The brown stuff is the old silicone which sealed the micro usb aperture, the four largest solder contacts just secured the usb to the board.
Fitting a new connector is beyond my skill set/eyes and equipment.

Buying the surface mount socket is the easy bit, it’s flowing the solder to join each leg properly that’s hard as a manual process.

In production these will be automated by a pick and place machine and effectively an over to flow the solder on , it’s a tricky thing to do repairing micro stuff, sockets are the easiest ones of a tricky bunch though given they’re the biggest

[touch]

You probably don't need to solder up all 5 pins. There's a + and - power (they'll be the 2 outermost connections) and the other 3 are data lines. If the data lines are not connected it might not do any fast charging but if the power is connected it'll still fall back to standard usb charging.

You could solder a couple of wires onto those pads to a usb socket elsewhere, or any type of dc power connector really.

[BigdummySteve]

That might be a plan, I have a few Exposure barrel leads kicking around. A female barrel connection would be robust, any clue what the polarity would be?

[ledburner]

That might be a plan, I have a few Exposure barrel leads kicking around. A female barrel connection would be robust, any clue what the polarity would be?

normally negative outer and positive centre, so you can short out by touching the chassis (also negative).
usb pinouts agree with what touch says, just not read up 0n it..
https://www.arrow.com/en/research-and-e ... usb-pinout

[touch]

I would guess that the pad on the right in the photo is the ground because it seems to be connected to the large ground plain of the pcb and that would make the one on the opposite side the +5volts connection. That's just a guess really though.

I can't tell from the photo because it depends which way up the missing usb socket was. You'll need to find the missing socket to see which orientation it was then you can compare it to the pinouts on the link ledburner posted and you can work it out from there.