That one guy who fried his Switch motherboard using a cheap soldering iron

At a local mod meetup in Austin last month, I watched a dude try to do a joystick swap with a $9 iron. He held the tip on the contact pad for like 15 seconds straight and melted the whole trace right off the board. Has anyone else seen someone ruin a console using gear way too cheap for the job?

2 comments

2 Comments

kevin_martin17d ago

15 seconds straight" is an understatement, it was probably more like 30 if he was that clueless. A $9 iron can work fine for a joystick swap if you know what you're doing, but if you're holding it that long on a trace, no iron in the world is gonna save you.

jesse_craig2617d ago

Nah, I mean a $9 iron is basically a butter knife, but you can still carve a turkey with one if you're careful. That trace was probably already cooked from someone's previous "repair" and the guy was just the final nail in the coffin.