Protecting your power supply during experiments

[fredrik]

@nschagen

I did some googling but I couldn’t find a product that looked like a USB-driven power supply.

I built the one in the picture, but the tiny black box on the red PCB is a standard 5 V to ±12 V DC-DC converter (the one in that picture is a Recom RS6-0512D that you can get from e.g. Mouser for a bit over $10). Similar converters are made by several manufacturers (this post has some names). You can build something similar on a breadboard.

@nschagen

I really need to figure out how I can get faster at this because it is very frustrating.

Some tips here:

A litany of dumbassery

Some options: Wick + extra flux (get a flux pen, and add extra flux to the wick before wicking) Manual desoldering pump (varying quality, most are a bit crap, I have an Engineer brand one that’s supposedly good but haven’t tried it yet, but even the crap ones can be useful for a first pass). Toothpicks, as mentioned (I think it was @analogoutput who first suggested that) Desoldering needles may work in some cases; less likely if the holes are tiny. Inertia – heat up the solder, smack the boar…