I had a worrying accident with my RPi 5 in that the Fan connector broke off.
I was inserting a wireless keyboard sender into one of the USB sockets which was a fairly tight fit. I was holding the board with one of my fingers braced against the back of the USB socket module and the fan connector, when I pushed the sender the fan connector broke off the board.
Luckily only one of the mounting pads broke off the board. The four signal / power solder pads simply came away from the solder pads on the board. Seems the solder joints may have been poorly soldered.
Re soldering the tiny pads was truly an exercise for patience, a steady hand, some flux and a fine, hot iron (400°C).
To prevent the connector breaking off again I needed to create some reinforcement as the I could not re-solder the securing pads.
I did this with a cushion of hot melt glue as per the attached pictures.
I did a stress test and the fan responded to the CPU temperature changes so I’m pretty sure all the four legs of the connector are soldered.
I was concerned my solder joints wouldn’t work as the pcb was quite cold and would drain the heat from the pads. That’s why I turned the soldering iron up to 400 degrees, which seemed to have worked.
Had a similar problem with piicodev lipo expansion board and the battery connector. Didn’t think I pressed too hard, but on two boards the surface mount connector broke off.
Managed to fix one with great difficulty, don’t have a hot air soldering iron. Didn’t bother with the second. Unsure if it was me or the soldering quality of the board. Note to self to be very careful in future.
Glad to hear the connector damage was minimal! Hot glue guns really are lifesavers. I usually keep a couple plugged in during projects to reinforce any vulnerable connections… then hide my “hot glue mess of shame” under some nice covers
Thanks for sharing your experience with the community!
