4: Desoldering the old Capacitors

Now it was time to remove the caps. The first one I did with the desoldering tweezers, which worked well enough. On the second one I couldn't get the tips of the tweezers close enough to the pads and lifted one. It's still connected but just barely. On the third capacitor I ripped one of the pads clean off.

So far so bad.

A close-up photo of the motherboard with two Capacitors removed. The footprint of the bigger one shows some damage to the solder-pads.

Another close-up of the same area on the motherboard, this time with a third cap removed. One of the pads it was connected to is missing.

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This was the point where I realized that I won't be able to use the desoldering tweezers with most capacitors because they'd clash with other components.

So I tried a more barbaric approach: I first cut off the cap right above the plastic socket with those wire cutters they always give you for free when you buy a 3D Printer. Then I used the same cutters to cut the protruding legs flush. That way the plastic socket could be lifted away and the remaining parts of the legs could be desoldered.

This probably also puts some stress on the pads, but way less than heating each side individually back and forth while trying to slowly lift the component away.

At this point I figured I should desolder the IO-Board to get better access to the caps under it. I'm sparing you the details, but I couldn't get it fully desoldered for the live of me and decided to give up before breaking something. I'll just have to work around that board.

So I went ahead and removed all remaining caps with the cutting-method and didn't lift a single pad. I'll be keeping this method in mind for the future.

A photo of the motherboard with the cut-off part of a cap with the area it was cut away from in the background.

A desoldering gun on the front side of the motherboard, desoldering the pin headers that connect the board with all the outputs to the motherboard.

A wide shot of the motherboard, with all the tops of the remaining caps cut off.

A small plastic box with various cut-apart capacitors.

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