I've still been trying to determine how to best remove the bad microchip from the VDU board. I thought it would be a piece of cake: melt the solder surrounding the legs and take the chip out. The problems I have encountered so far have been:
- All legs have to have liquid solder simultaneously. That is easy to make happen with a soldering iron on a resistor. That is impossible to make happen with a soldering iron on a 20-leg microchip.
- Another option for having the solder be liquid is a heat gun. But since I am not skilled with a heat gun and I think me using one would be dangerous, that is not a path.
- I tried using copper solder wick. After working for a couple hours getting the solder wicked from the bottom of the board, the chip will still not lift off. I can't see any more solder that is holding it on, but apparently I am wrong. I can't just yank it off despite solder still being there or I risk destroying the traces on the board.
- Another option is to cut each of the individual microchip legs and then the body of the microchip will be free. Then I would just unsolder each loose leg. The problem with this method is that the microchip is so close to a neighboring microchip that I have yet to find an instrument that can reach in and snip the individual legs. What I really need is needlenose pliers, except the nose has to be bladed for cutting, not knurled for gripping. I just bought a set of small cutting pliers, but they still won't get in there. This was the smallest tool I could find after going to 2 hardware stores.
Here is a picture with a ruler for scale. Can anyone please give a hyperlink for buying a tool for this work on Amazon or anywhere else?