How to Remove Solder from a Solder Joint

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Kip and I'm here on behalf of Expert Village. Now, let's say you made a mistake with soldering and you need to de-solder a joint. Now with a microphone XLR cable it's easy. Just hit up the tip of it and pull it out. You don't necessarily have to clean up that joint real good at that point, but then you might need to clean it up if you're going to reuse the component. So let's show you the techniques of how to remove solder properly from a joint. We're actually going to remove the solder from this potentiometer. Obviously this is not an audio connector, well, it is a type. The reason we're going to do that is because it's easier for you to see on a flat surface what we're doing. Now there are two types, we showed you two tools. There is the solder sucker, which essentially has a plunger. Heat up the joint until the solder flows, and then suck. And there you go. Now on the tip here, when I push this down, you see some solder came out of there. Now the other way - and a lot of times I'll use both ways - one to get the basic glob off, and then I'll use this braid. And all of these are available at your local electronics store. And I'll use this braid, and with the braid, what you do is lay that over, let it heat up, and then rub that around on the surface where that solder was, and it will suck it into this braid and clean that surface off very, very nicely. There we go. That looks much better. And that's how you de-solder a joint. Now remember, if you go to www.greatnutshells.com, you can download a free pdf of all the various connector types or connector conversions from XLR to quarter-inch, balanced to non-balanced and so forth so that you can make cables that fit specific application needs."