Vince's Repair Thread - (Console Repairs & Mods)

[Bubo]

@Vince - drop me a pm with your address - I've admit defeat with my Dualsense

Struggled to get even 1 stick off, and have scratched the PCB.

I've put it mostly back together and will send all bits including the replacement analogues.

Honestly much harder to do than I expected and should have just sent it to you to begin with, so sorry and also a warning for anyone else

What was it you struggled with? Was it the solder sucking part to the get thing off in a oner? This is the sucker I have, hopefully it will do the job with its silicone nib which can kind of seal around the molten solder and get a better suck.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/innovative-enveloping-silicone-nozzle-engineer/dp/B0CSXLJ47T?th=1

I am planning on giving mine a go this weekend. Just the left stick is drifting on mine I guess since that's the one that gets most use, so looks like just doing one of them is wise if you can get away with it.

 

[Armageus]

What was it you struggled with?

I got the 2x 3 pins for the actual pots done - basically just a case of laying the knife top across all 3 and doing them at once, the issue was with the remaining 4 big + 4 little pins on the stick - because there's no literally no movement in the component, I couldn't release even a single leg.

Was it the solder sucking part to the get thing off in a oner? This is the sucker I have, hopefully it will do the job with its silicone nib which can kind of seal around the molten solder and get a better suck.

I tried 2 different solder suckers - admittedly both cheap ones (one came with my soldering iron), but neither seemed to do anything - ended up using desoldering braid for what bits I could do.

I then got frustrated and cut the rest of the stick off with my flush snips, but I scraped the pcb


I'm sure Vince will be able to work his magic on it though when he's back from holiday, because other than I was quite happy - got the wires from the vibration motors desoldered dead easy, got all of the controller to bits to replace the buttons, triggers and touch pad with some coloured parts - finished result should look good.

 

[Bubo]

I got the 2x 3 pins for the actual pots done - basically just a case of laying the knife top across all 3 and doing them at once, the issue was with the remaining 4 big + 4 little pins on the stick - because there's no literally no movement in the component, I couldn't release even a single leg.

I asked in another post in this thread somewhere if you could simply just replace the two three prong H and V pots and their wiper pieces that are detachable from a new donor full stick assembly, cos if the assemblies are identical in dimensions it could be just a case of replacing the bit with the carbon trace and the wiper, and leaving the original central piece alone on the pcb, then you just have to de-solder those three prong pieces. And if you are confident and committed you can also take the snips just to those two pieces and isolate each prong to make it much easier, so it is just a case of de-soldering one prong at a time and pulling away, then cleaning up the solder. That is how one guy did it anyway on a youtube vid I watched. Probably going to have a go at that first then, I bought a 5-pack or replacement sticks, so have one extra I can experiment with, although I will probably still just do the one dodgy stick.

edit: I've also considered slicing the central piece in half horizontally with a Dremel and seeing what that opens up to make it easier, but have to be fully committed going that far I guess.