Problems replacing the LED’s in the Mars Aqua Black Box

PeterLL · May 28, 2020

Hi everyone,
I’ve had a pretty pathetic attempt at replacing the LED’s and I’m just looking for advice. I tried to replace 6, got none of them working, and I’m pretty sure completely destroying the LED ports:

I have a solder that goes up to 450°C, yet i was struggling to get the metal to melt, even holding it for minutes on the metal it was still pretty solid.

Secondly it was difficult to pull the LED’s off, even when the metal was soft and would pull up black sheet, I’m assuming this destroying the LED port.
It was also extremely difficult to melt the metal of the new LED, even at 450°C, to attach it to the existing lump of metal.
Any advice?

thank you

andrewey · May 28, 2020

Do you have a lot of experience soldering? I suspect that while your soldering iron will get hot enough, you did not prepare the tip properly, hence why you were unable to get enough conduction between the tip and the part to be soldered, hence why you had to hold it on there for a few minutes. This would also explain why you burnt some of the underlying board. I would suggest properly cleaning your tip and practicing on something that isn't mission critical before continuing.

PeterLL · May 28, 2020

andrewey said:
Do you have a lot of experience soldering? I suspect that while your soldering iron will get hot enough, you did not prepare the tip properly, hence why you were unable to get enough conduction between the tip and the part to be soldered, hence why you had to hold it on there for a few minutes. This would also explain why you burnt some of the underlying board. I would suggest properly cleaning your tip and practicing on something that isn't mission critical before continuing.

Thank you, ill admit I do not have much experience. However the soldering iron and tips were brand new and hence clean - is this what you mean by preparing them?
I agree I should practice on something else but I'm not sure how I'd fix the problems.