SparkFun Forums

[jbleecker]

So, I fubbed a board. There's a via right under my $35 gyro chip (IDG300) and I should've put a via restrict under there — so, I'm noticing intermittent shorts that I've pretty much figured has to be from that via shorting to the large ground pad on the IDG300. I'm figuring its that because the short never appears when I remove the chip, and it occured once, spookily, when I put a bit of pressure on the chip. Not good.

Anyone have any ideas about a ood way to "patch" that via? Just put a bit of some kind of material over it so that its insulated somehow? Is there a special sort of bit of material that's similar to solder mask that I could just apply a little dab of? Something that won't fry when I hot-air the chip on?

I saw the thread on solder resist material, but no one seemed to find a material that would do this. So, I'm trying again from a different angle — not about making my own solder mask, but trying to do a little DIY fix for an existing board.

Thanks for any help!

Julian

[jasonharper]

A bit of Kapton would do the job - that's the stuff they use to make flexible PCBs. If you've got a dead hard drive or CD-ROM laying around, you can probably find a small square of it with no copper that you could snip out.

Another possibility would be to drill out that via, so there's no copper left to make a short, and reconnect the signal it carried with a wire.

[LiquidPenguin]

Forgive me for butting in and asking, I'm not much help.

What's a via?

[TruAnRksT]

Forgive me for butting in and asking, I'm not much help.

What's a via?

A small plated through hole for passing signals, power or ground from one side of a board to the other.

[ke7eha]

kapton would work, also teflon [PTFE] is insulating, so it would work as an insulator.

You can get Kapton tape at digikey, p/n 3M541312-ND. It's expensive though.

Myself, I would either use a piece of Teflon or an insulator from a TO220 mount kit, which is usually Kapton or mica.

[funnynypd]

If not, you might want to add some glue to fix the location of the isolation.