De-soldering ESC wires

[TommyG]

Hi Fliers,
I'm in the process of building a quad and need different length wires on my ESCs (Turnigy Plush 18A). I have tried to melt the solder with my soldering iron. Some parts of the solder melt but soon refreeze when I move to a different area. I give up after a little while as the ESC seems to get incredibly hot.

Does anyone have some advice on how to de-solder the wires on speed controllers?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Tom

 

[SteveOBHave]

Hi Tom. To be honest I would personally not try to desolder the wires from the ESC itself but trim them down, solder on extensions and heatshrink the joins. It sounds like your soldering iron is not hot enough to convincingly do the job of extracting the wires from the PCB so until you can get a slightly more powerful one I'd keep away from any components. The other thing you can do is just solder on some bullet connectors and make some extension leads.

A decent soldering iron will melt the solder in a matter of moments, you should never have to hold it on when desoldering.

Steve

 

[tramsgar]

If you iron is not hot enough, or if the ESC gets too hot before the solder melts, then use a small gas burner (or water pipe lighter, whatever you got) and heat the end of the bullet you want to get rid of. Do like this: Attach the bullet to something that doesn't burn or scream when it's hot. Grip the wire close to the ESC with your hand and tug lightly. Now burn the bullet. The intense heat will melt the solder before the heat has traveled to the ESC through the wire. If not, you'll feel the heat yourself through the wire and can abort before the ESC is damaged. Happy desoldering!

 

[Bigenglish]

first get a better soldering iron ( more watts) then you could try using a solder sucker or some de-solder braid. butt as a comms engineer i would say its better to extend and heat-shrink. this way you wont cook the FETS in your speedo!!!!!

Solder sucker is a pump device that uses a vacuum to draw liquid solder from joint.

Solder braid, is a copper woven tape that wicks the liquid solder away.

hope this helps?