Repairing pc traces on a multi-layered board.

Why can't you just run the wire from the cap to the connector?

Hi Mike,

I wanted to avoid running wires from the top of the board to the bottom. If you meant running wires directly to the connector, those terminals are used when the cable from the volume control gets plugged in. If you meant anything else, I'm not sure what you meant. :-)

Thanks for your reply.

so drill a hole through a blank part of the pcb to pass the jumper wire

You could prize off the plastic connector housing off the pins, and solder thin wires from that to the capacitors, then put it back again.

Gareth.

Hi Gareth,

Good suggestion but I was still wondering if a wire can be soldered to those circular through-hole connectors.

Thanks for your reply.

... Is it possible to solder jumper wires from the

Multi-layer board - you have no idea where the traces are running so drilling a hole is not be a good idea, unless the board is translucent enough that you can see the inner layers that is.

John :-#(#

My Bad. When you said thru-hole caps, I made the wrong assumption. There's no reason you can't solder to the feedthrus. Be aware that they're not very robust. If the hole is big enough, stick a tiny wire thru for the connection. I use solid wire-wrap wire for such things, but a strand from a stranded wire can work.

If there are only 2 layers, you could ream the hole if necessary If there are inner layers, you will break some other internal connection.

Another issue is that if the corrosive stuff from the caps ate the connection, there may be other issues to follow.

I fixed a TEK scope once where the cap goo ate feedthrus for some distance around the caps. Finding where to bridge the gaps was challenging without schematics.

The goo is difficult to clean off, but if you don't do it thoroughly, you'll be fixing it again later. It gets under the SMT chips. Alternating simple-green and alcohol and a toothbrush a few times should take care of it.

I'm far too lazy to decipher the manual. If the caps go other places, you can bridge to there instead of the connector.

I just repaired a Snap-On Modis OBDII scanner in this manner. This is a mu lti-layer board, but fortunately the liquid damage was limited to a top to bottom connection, not an internal one.

Years ago I was given a roll of transformer wire, which is very thin and la cquer coated. This will snake into very small plated through holes and it did perfectly in the scanner. If the scanner were a double layer board, it would have been simple enough to drill a small hole next to the dead feed through, but on a multi layer, that's out of the question. Transformer wir e is ideal for pushing through a blackened feed through. Single strands fr om stranded wire is certainly thin enough, but it won't have the stiffness to push through most plated through holes.

I decided to take some fine gauge wires and run them around the side of the board to get to the other side. It wasn't the most elegant fix but it corrected the problem.

Thanks for your reply.