For my T-shirt project, I would like to get it as low-profile as possible (So that the panel sticks out as little as possible)
Most of the height of the panel is due to the Hub75 and power connectors, so I would like to remove them.
I am curious if anyone has tried this before - I have a heat gun, but I am not sure how the flexible panel material would handle it.
If de-soldering does not work, plan B might be to use a dremel with a cutting disc
Any ideas?
First remove the plastic of the connector with any suitable tool, like a cutter. After that you will able to desolder pins one by one.
Yeah I had considered that approach
My concern there is that I will rip the pads off while trying to pull the plastic connectors off. I am wondering though that if I apply a bit of heat to the plastic, whether it would mitigate this issue.
It looks like it would not be a problem to do this with the HUB75 connector as it appears as if the bottom of the plastic connector is not even touching the PCB.
The power connector, however, looks different. It most certainly is touching the PCB and I suspect that it is maybe glued on.
I am now actually thinking to just try cutting the connectors back, leaving part of the pins still there - that way I can solder wires to the stubs of the pins and use heat shrink to insulate them. If I direct soldered to the pads, I could not use heat shrink.
I am also now more leaning towards making the base thick enough such that it is just about as long as the connectors without any plugs plugged into them. Because these boards have two inputs, that would allow me to butcher one input for direct soldering, and leave a 2nd backup input with connectors that I can use plugs with - in case I suspect that my solder job is causing a problem.
That would allow me to make it ~12mm shorter than it would currently need to be.
I am also now leaning towards mounting it on the inside of the T-shirt (Cut a big square hole in the T-shirt and velcro the frame to the inside), as this would make it blend in way better - ie the panel would be flush with the surface of the t-shirt. I am thinking that if I mount it this way, it will matter a bunch less how thick the whole assembly is
On the flexPCB, I tried to desolder the connector once, and that made pixels fall off on the other side due to the heat. It’s very tricky to get right, expect to damage some boards in the process of trying it out.