A broken pin on a 0.4mm TQFP.

This was an interesting repair. The little company that I work with discovered that one of the pins on the TQFP was not pulled out to the header on the breakout board. They needed that pin so they hired someone to desolder it, lift it, and solder a wire on the to cut the trace to one of the header pins and bring the wire out to it.

Unfortunately, the guy they hired to do the work messed it up pretty bad. You can soo the three pins to the right of this repair are damaged. He broke the pin that he was working on clean off the package. They gave it to me to try to save.

First, I rescued the damaged pins as best I could. Then I filed down the edge of the plastic package until I exposed the lead inside and soldered a 0.1 mm bodge wired onto it. I took that wire out to the pin on the header.

This is not an elegant repair but it got them back in business while they waited for a replacement BoB to arrive. I think they are still using this BoB for their development.

I do these fine repairs under an Olympus SZ40 microscope with a ring light.

I always wanted an optical soldering microscope but could never justify the cost. I found this one in a microscope shop in Montreal for $200. For that price I couldn't not buy it.