SparkFun Electronics Forum

I soldered an adapter onto my laptop following instructions on sparkfun. It is a very small port and it was very difficult for me as I am a beginner. There is a drop of solder bridging two of the pins and I want to know if its important to remove it. Laptop works fine but I was wondering if it could cause damage or was dangerous. Thanks

I'm assuming you are talking about the board mount receptacle for a DC power jack that has 3 pins on the bottom?

If so, the two pins you shorted are probably the ground and the switched pin that gets shorted to ground when you insert a plug into the receptacle. If you had shorted any other combination, the laptop would not have powered up when you plugged in the power supply. If the shorted pins are what I think they are, either nothing will happen because the laptop doesn't make use of the extra pin, or the laptop will always think a power supply is plugged in regardless of whether or not one actually is.

Now would be as good of a time as any to learn how to remove and clean up solder bridges on PCBs.

-Bill

Thanks for your response. I am referring to a receptacle that you solder into the motherboard. It has 3 pins on either side and one in the back. It powers fine and it registers when it plugs. I hear you on the learning part but if everything is funtioning properly can I be comfortable leaving as is?

This is the port in question http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 7134754014

The ebay link is no longer valid. If everything is working fine right now, you should be OK. If the bridge spanned 2 incompatible pins, you would have known immediately that something wasn't right because the system would not power up or charge.

-Bill

Thanks!!

crasswell wrote:Thanks!!

Not trying to be ugly, but you don't really want to make a habit of taking risks like this. It appears that you got lucky this time, but it could just as easily been a disaster resulting in a destroyed connecter or a fusible link burning out in the battery pack, or other things even more spectacular. Lithium ion battery's can flow tremendous amounts of current.

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crasswell wrote:Thanks!!

Not trying to be ugly, but you don't really want to make a habit of taking risks like this. It appears that you got lucky this time, but it could just as easily been a disaster resulting in a destroyed connecter or a fusible link burning out in the battery pack, or other things even more spectacular. Lithium ion battery's can flow tremendous amounts of current.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk