I have had good success reflowing drivers, tailcap boards and led’s but for the life of me I can’t stack 7135’s. Not sure if it is my bad eyes, not so steady hands or a combination of both but I can’t do it. I have had to reflow damaged 7135’s on boards that I have tried.
I have a couple of drivers that I really need this done to. I can send the drivers, the 7135’s and would of course pay return shipping. I could trade a light maybe for the work.
If you are interested and can do the work, please contact me via PM.
I do not have a real reflow station, I am using something similar to a heat gun but smaller. I did try that with it and the original and the added one just slid off along with other parts around it. I think I could maybe do it with a real reflow gun and a tiny nozzle. I may have to try and pick one up this winter.
I thought someone had posted a video a while back (last year?) but I couldn’t find it with a quick search. This post describes how to stack 7135 chips step by step with pics. Did you try doing it this way? I’m sorry I can’t help you. I’ve only succeeded in stacking a few chips once and it was a lot of trouble and I never wanted to try again.
This is the driver I have been trying to work on. I have tried several times with this driver. I am trying to add 3 more thru the center and 1 to the bottom center chip. The 2 outside chips on the bottom row concern me, not sure there is room on them… Shadow JM20 driver. Sevreal folks have offered to help, and I appreciate it! Asking for help on a fairly simple process like this is not something that I ever wanted to do, trust me. I just can’t make it all work together to stack the darn things. I have cooked some 7135s, lifted some traces and had other disasters practicing the process and really do not want to screw up this driver.
For me, my biggest problem is my eyes, I am 20/850 and 20/900 and very astigmatic. When I use magnifiers, I have to do so without glasses due to the latter and my depth of field is only about 1/2” and couple that with less than steady hands and a simple solder job becomes a very difficult thing. What really sucks is that for the first 5 years out of univeristy, I was a damn good bench tech doing component level work work police radar and radio units. SMD is a godsend for me, I just have to find a way to hold it and get heat to it. For whole drivers I use basically a heat gun and for small parts on the board I can usually get that done with an iron. The mechanics of the stack are what kills me, I have to get so close to the parts to see that I just cannot get good bracing on my iron hand with clips or clamps on the chip.
The hell of it is that I love to do component level work! LED swaps and whole driver boards are easy for me, but not this kind of stuff.
There are several videos, several methods… just can’t get it to work! I will try again, but if I kill the driver then I have to make an OshPark board for the light, can’t get the driver.
