Help Soldering Vias
 

I've been practicing soldering on an old motherboard and i'm just about ready to try the PS2 but I am having trouble soldering to vias. What I do is scrape the via with an exacto knife. Then I tin the wire. Then I insert the wire in the hole and warm the via and the wire together. The thing is that how do I know that I did it right. In a previous post lufcfan posted this website http://www.cyber-mag.com/station/ps2tips.htm . Here they say that I should fill up the hole with solder and create a pad, but the via is too small to do that. Any suggestions?

**sigh**

Read this

http://www.fileforums.com/showthread.php?t=58172

Thanks. This helps alot :) .
Is the solder paste you mention soldering flux?

Yes

look here

http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...ct%5Fid=64-022

Take your time when doing vias(use alot of flux, and keep solder to the minimum on the tip). But dont keep your iron on the via for a long time otherwise you could burn it out.

After I read the first post I went to radio shack to see if I could find it and I found this http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...%5Fid=64%2D029 . This is suppose to be solder for parts that are too small to get with the soldering iron. You apply some to the place you want to solder and when you heat it, it melts and then hardens like normal solder. The problem is that it's silver bearing paste which I am told, should not be used on boards. Has anyone tried this?

U shouldn't need to use it. Standard solder will do the Job. I personally use liquid flux and lots of it where vias are concerned.

Tinning the vias should be no problem as after youve used the blade to remove the coating the copper underneath should have a rough surface that the solder sticks to, but as for filling the gap in the via, well that can be a bit hit n miss.

I usually end up using the wire as a bridge to force the solder to "blob" over the gap, this means u tin the via, tin the wire, apply lots of liquid flux and then solder the wire across the gap and the solder should run across the wire sealing the via over and giving a good bond.

Looking at the vias, some of them route back to the solder pad area used on the v5 / v7 mobos. Anyone know if its possible to cut down the via number by using the solder pads further back?