What is micro-soldering? What we really do under the microscope
Components smaller than a grain of salt, a hot-air station, a microscope, and a lot of patience. A guided tour.
A smartphone logic board carries several hundred components on a few square centimetres: chips, capacitors, resistors, coils, connectors. The smallest are 0.4 mm long. Micro-soldering is the art of replacing one of them without touching its neighbours.
The tools
- The stereo microscope, 10 to 45 times magnification: without it nothing is possible.
- The hot-air station, with controlled temperature and airflow, to remove and fit chips.
- The precision iron with fine tips, for small components and wires.
- The bench power supply and the thermal camera, to find the component that heats up.
- Schematics and board views, to know what each component does and where it is.
What we repair this way
A charging circuit, a torn-off connector, a shorted power chip, a trace cut by a fall, a PS5's HDMI port, a MacBook's screen flex, a component taken out by a liquid. In each case the rest of the board is intact: your data stays in place, and the repair costs the price of a component and an hour or two of work, not a new board.
What it doesn't do
A board burnt over a large area, or a cracked processor, can't be repaired. We see it at the diagnosis, we tell you, and you pay nothing.
Also worth reading
Three-euro chargers and cables: what they really damage
Some of the charging-circuit repairs we do begin with a petrol-station cable. What happens inside the phone, how to recognise a good cable, and what carries no risk.
Repair the component or replace the board: why we almost always choose the component
A new logic board is half the device's price, and your data lost. A component is a few euros. The two approaches, and what each one implies.
My phone is under two years old: manufacturer warranty or independent repairer?
The legal conformity warranty covers factory defects for two years, not breakage. When it is better to go through the seller, and when an independent repair makes sense.