A successful damaged SMD inductor repair
I don't normally work with SMD components as they are so tiny and difficult to assemble. However, I recently repaired an active antenna that was damaged in the post. An SMD inductor core was broken. I managed to negotiate a partial refund, but rather than send the item all the way back to China, I attempted the repair myself. I am not sure how they do this in the factory, but unlike the other components, the solder terminals were hidden under the inductor. I flooded it with solder from the side trying to get it to make contact with the solder pads and this did the trick. I did not have any SMD inductors, but was successfully able to solder a full size inductor as a replacement.
The antenna is BF998 based and works quite well after the repair. The main unit is small enough to fit into a Smarties tube, to the bottom of which I have fitted a PL259 connector.
|