Nearly Fried the Whole Thing

crwdns2853023:0crwdne2853023:0

My Xbox Series X controller displayed extensive drift for a few months. My player would keep pointing toward the sky without any input from me.

crwdns2853024:0crwdne2853024:0

It could've gone better. I've desoldered a few things, but usually they are my own boards, and apparently not cleaned like the pros do it. As such, normally when I take the soldering iron to the joints, they're still ready to melt.

I tried and tried to re-tin my tip and add flux by adding more solder, as was recommended in a YouTube video or two, but couldn't quite get the old joystick off. I caused lots of through-hole damage to the board because my methods were boorish and impatient.

Once I finally torched the beast and got the old pieces out of the way, the IFixIt joystick went in very well, and I soldered it pretty much flush where it needed to be. The middle pins of the potentiometers, however, didn't connect right, because I had fried the leads. I ended up following the melted PCB to the nearest "TP##" points on the board, and soldering on some jumpers as a last-ditch effort. When I plugged it back in to the gamepad tester, it worked perfectly. We'll just have to see how long it holds up.

crwdns2853025:0crwdne2853025:0

Get your solder paste ahead of time. If de-soldering is going too slowly, there's probably something wrong.