Five Ways to Repair Broken PCB Traces [Hackaday]

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When everything used wires, it was easy to splice them or replace them. Not so much with PC boards, but everyone has their favorite method for repairing a broken trace. [Mr. SolderFix] has his five favorite ways, as you can see in the video below.

Of course, before you can repair a trace, you probably have to expose it since most boards have solder mask now. Unless you plan to shut the trace at both ends, exposing the actual trace is probably the first step.

The first method is to just blob with solder, but we aren’t fans of that. Solder is not a great interconnect, so we nearly always put a small bit of wire over the gap, even if we might cover it with solder. That way, if the solder cracks over time, you still have a conductor as long as the solder bonds to the trace and wire. We did like that he used a blob of solder mask to cover the repair, which was a nice touch.

Of course, that isn’t going to work if you have a long delaminated trace. In particular, about two inches of a track was totally off the substrate. Here, using a wire is essential. We usually don’t bother to fit it exactly to the trace, but he is a bit more particular than we are. He used solder to model the bends in the wire and then straightened it out. That serves as a guide for how long to cut the jumper wire. He then bends the jumper to fit the trace and tacks it down with Kapton tape. It doesn’t work any better than one of our spaghetti-like repairs, but it does look better.

You’ve probably seen — or could deduce — how to do these repairs, but tips like using solder to model a trace are priceless. Some repairs have been done with copper sheets instead of wires. We didn’t see him using any conductive paint, which we’ve also had good luck with and we’ll admit we’ve covered repairs with clear nail polish rather than solder mask, but there are many possibilities, of course.

What’s your favorite method? It is harder — but not impossible — to repair boards that are completely broken. If you are a masochist, put your wires inside the board instead.