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I have a hot air station and I'm trying to replace the HDMI port on a PS3 (playstation 3). The problem I'm having is trying to melt the solder on the hdmi port. I'm curious to what kind of solder its using as I can't seem to melt it at even 400C. I did test to see if it melted my other solder I got from radio shack and it did in fact melt it.

  • Why is the solder on these boards so much harder to melt? Is there something extra added to these solder points?

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Nick Alexeev
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Patoshi パトシ
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1 Answers1

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Lead-free solder, most likely. I would expect melting temperature somewhere between 210°C and 230°C. As @Ignacio and @Majenko have mentioned in the comment, the ground planes in the PCB are acting as heat sinks. A common way to address this is to pre-heat the whole board. Of course, you have to be careful and avoid pre-heating so much that other components (BGAs, most notably) come off. See this article for some details.

Here's another useful trick. Leaded solder has a lower melting point around 190°C. You can lower the melting point of the lead-free solder joint by mixing leaded solder to it in situ.

Nick Alexeev
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  • even if i have it at 300-400C it seems very hard to come off. So your saying the pcb board it self is absorbing the heat? But its such a higher temperature. Do you recommend other tools besides a hot air station? Or do you have to use a hot air station for this type of removal? – Patoshi パトシ Nov 03 '14 at 21:02