Technique for pulling gold plated pins?

If your pulling pins from the motherboards then your degrading the boards. Hmmm. I pull pins from other things and they all have different techniques.

Just about the easiest is pulling pins from are the floppy connector. I'd say if you insist on pulling from the boards then hit the backside (where the conn. pins are soldered) with the angle grinder or sander to knock the solder loose.

What boards are you removing the gold plated pins from? Many boards will be seriously devalued if you remove the pins. I don't removed pins from nearly any boards but especially mother boards, hard drive boards, PCI boards, cd/dvd boards.

Were do I remove gold plated pins? Connectors are the almost the only thing I pull the pins out of. The exception has been really low grade boards that just happen to have gold plated pins.

When my wife and I pull the pins from IDE connectors we use small-ish side cutter aka diagonal cutters. In fact they are the cheap blue handle ones that we buy at Harbor Freight.

Good luck, Mike


ps I guess Mech hit the send the button first so I do agree with him. Mike

If you are not concerned with devaluing of the boards check out heated sand baths or heat guns.
just remember safety concerns related to heating PCB's

Originally Posted by FLScrapperGuy1

Is there a technique used to make it a little easier to pull gold plated pins from computer circuit boards? I found a guy throwing away 7 - yes 7 - computers including CPU chips, and a box of hard drives and slot cards (SCORE!). Now, it's just me vs. the gold pins. So far, this is what I've found that works best:

On the reverse side of the circuit board, use a screw driver tip to mash/loosen the soldered pin tips. I place the tip of the screw driver in between the soldered ends of the pins, and twist it. This breaks the soldering, and somewhat loosens the pins. Then, I flip the board over. Use the screw driver to remove plastics so pins are free and accessible from all sides. Next, I use a needle nose, grab the pin from the base, and slowly twist, in a "U" or circular fashion, the pin gripped with the needle nose. The pin, half the time, comes out whole. The other half the time, the pin snaps, and I just get a portion of it.

Is there a better way?

If you don't mind the smell, I'd look into getting a soldering pot and solder bars. It works by using molten solder to desolder items on the board but be careful as you can cook the boards surface if left over the pot too long or have the setting up too high. I've found this to be a safer method then using a heat gun or soldering iron.