How To Repair Damaged / Broken PCB Traces - 2 Great Methods 

This was a very wonderful demonstration. You may be the politest RU-vidr I have ever watched. I smiled when and laughed when you said, "Please bare with me.".

You sir have best soldering tutorial on YT!

One of the best teaching channels on YT

Very nice job... I've done hundreds of these repairs, and none of mine have looked this nice... My proudest job I've done was on a home subwoofer amplifier where the board was broken in half. It was only a double-sided board, so just stitched it back together with short wires. And it worked!

I am just learning to solder and this channel is amazing. Thank you for creating so many great videos.

Amazing craftsmanship in this tutorial. It goes to show that the more skilled you get, the higher it raises the bar for when you consider a component "blown" beyond repair. This will be useful for some amps and audio gear from the 70s and 80s where those silver traces just lift so easily. Far from an easy fix, but some vintage stuff is worth restoring.

I did a Xbox Series X HDMI retrace a while back, 12 traces missing and i wish i had watched your video first, very good tips ! appreciate it man !

Great Video. Never forget hot melt glue for retaining wires. Works a treat and also quick setting👍

Brilliantly done and demonstrated. Well worth a watch. 👍👏🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿👍👏🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

I learned a lot from you. The way you stripped the wire in several places. I always tried to strip the last end with the other soldered down. Great technique that I will now use. Thanks!

Nice clean work, you make it look so easy with these tiny tracks. Thank you.

Superb razor work. I always end up removing a extra inch of PcB, lol :) I used this video to fix my hd 7950 and it worked for along time before just crapping out on me again. This time, the fan controller burned off of the board so Im'a say its done for!

it took me 12h to watch it and follow ;-) AMAZING is not enough to say

This is a masterclass in this technique. Bravo!

Awesome vids all the time. Love watching them. Thanks MSF for posting all your great tips, tricks and work. 👍

I’m so happy this video exists. Nicely done 👍

That's disturbingly professional!😩👍

Bravo! Thank you so so much :) accent is poetic i could listen as well

Your solder tricks are awesome. Made life a bit easier for us. 🖖🏻

Good evening. Great job...and valuable suggestions from a true pro! Regards from Italy.

I personally love running wires everywhere lol love you content bro 👍

The editing on these videos is absolutely mad, and I love it. Thank you ❤

Great stuff man! Thanks for the tips!

excellent craftmanship!, i think i can now repair my ac to dc converter for my rv camper. thanks!

Awesome work, honestly so clean

It needs lots of patience, very good video 👍

We’ll done! Both great methods, thanks

Amazing job!! thank you a lot for sharing.i really love it

I got into electronics through hardware hacking. Your videos really inspired me and you're very good at what you do. I want to attach wires to traces, for example rx and tx lines, but it's annoying having bare wires. Any solutions for this without drilling a component into the board (not always possible when the back of the board is used). I've got a hakko rework station, and microscope. your videos inspired me to get those when I had a small amount of inheritance. I'm from UK too :) Just wanted you to know your videos have inspired a new career for me.

Thank you sir, that's EXACTLY what my solid state guitar amplifier board looked like. Very Good Video....................... oh ... I "liked /subscribed " and hit the bell also. Thank You

Great Video, Thank you!!!!!🙂

Awesome thank you for sharing

nice straight forward video. i just got a relatively rare 80s car diagnostic scanner that im gonna try this on. it has a burned trace coming off from its db15 port. this vid could save so many old electronics by showing what some steady hands and a bit of skill can do!

thank You, I'll fix mine now, great video!

Thank you for the great video.

Very good 👍 ,, is clean

That's a clean repair if I have ever seen one. Subscribing!

Brings back childhood memories of my entry into electronics repair

Thank you Sir, helpful for me 🙏👍

Great idea the use of solder to get the shape then straighten and cut wire to length.

Well presented. Thank you

Thanks for your tutorials ,very nice🇲🇨

Thank you for the hint with tape!

outstanding work my friend.

Excellent video, I will try to use all of your information. BTW really nice job

Wao great work sir nicely and clean done very well amazing from india 💕👍

Good work..I use a pencil eraser to clean those bare copper pads. I see you applied flux and that also worked very well. Thanks again.

Best tutorial, I liked and subbed.

nice and very perfect work sir take love from bangladesh

Great tips!

Great video!

Great tutorial. It's a bit of a different way than I'm used to seeing this done, however I think that's just fine - as long as the end results are the same, as well as that the "craftsmanship" continues to work over time (i.e., it doesn't break/stop working after only a week of use, due to poor quality of the work completed).. Anyways, thanks for the video, mate!! I greatly appreciate it! Good job 👍👍👌

thankyou sir, excellent video and explination, good day to you from wenatchee usa

Very nice brother 👍👍👍 I am from India Jammu and Kashmir.

Great Tutorial Mate well explained and documented!

Very neat. Thanks.

My induction stove had a small broken path in the main circuit board. Thanks to your video I now can repair it. I'll update this comment when it's done thanks!

Sir, you have impressive skills.

Amazing skills

Thanks, this video help me to try to repair a controller joystick fault

awesome video❤

Thanks very very good

Thank you for making this video!

Great work thanx sir

Well done Sir though there could be some time sawing shortcuts I'd reccomend: 1. In your Method1 I use just an uninsulated strand of a multistrand cable matching the gauge of the broken track. I do solder one end in and follow the original track to bend at required angles until I reach the destination track. Before I solder the other end I use now the UV activated glue at each bend, then I do terminate and solder the other end. Finally, I use the conformal PCB laquer to finalise the job. 2. The alternative is to use the wire-wrap wire and just to connect between required points. This way it does not have to follow the original track because it is all insulated. This is kind of an equivalent of your Method2. The UV glue is still used to secure the job. The presented video does show the situation I have never encountered in my many years of servicing. Most of the PCB damges of this type did come from a client dropping a device to the ground and caused tracks break on the PCB because of inertia of a heavy element connected to it - like for example, a transformer. The third type of damage you have not covered in this video is the one I found to be most frustrating. It is a dry solder thermal runaway joint of a power component soldered to the PCB destroying the through hole of the at least two layer PCB. Ofcourse, there is more. It may be ancient to you Sir but still relevant; please have a look on this RU-vid link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-IBi40aq4-t0.html Cir-Kit is the hardware to use in ambitious repair but I do not use it very often. Kind Regards

When I worked at NCR back in the early 80s we had what they called track repair which was a tin metal strip similar to what they use to connect solar cells together but we had it in widths the same width as the traces on our circuit boards. I've never seen it available in any catalog that has soldering supplies.

Good job...

Super !

Yes all the brocken AMIGAS that has been restored by RU-vid butches shade a tear now! Repair nice done!

Beautiful work, I'm an amateur and I've repaired a broken trace in a flat ribbon cable and it looked the extreme opposite of this!

The part about using a piece of solder to shape the wire is pure genius.

hermoso, gracias

This have way few likes, awesome work!

Looks very good. Have you tried the copper slug tape for making tracks it works well for wider tracks you can cut it down the middle with a sharp blade. Try the UV cure glue it’s quicker. Thanks regards Chris

Question about the glue you used to stabilize the wire.. Do you have a link? I can't find anything called "Tac Pack" or "Tack Pack" which I think is what you said. Also, is it removable without hurting the traces/board? I have heard people say they use clear fingernail polish because it can be dissolved. Any comment/opinion on that? Also, what about hot glue stick?

love your videos. I think I have watched them all at least 2 times. Im curious. What is your camera setup? Im about to buy my own and I like the quality of yours.

what is the liquid called you used to hold the wires in place? thank you. helpful video

awsome

💪💪💪Thanks! ♥

What kind of flux are you using? And what was the two part glue you used? Or activator an glue.

Great video! I often have to repair single sided boards with pads lifting, but the traces are intact, this is simply due to heat from PSU components (the boards are twenty five years old!). Would you still use the TakPak to bond the pad/trace to the fibreglass, or would you use another product, or another method?

Good day, help needed! Copper gone on an entire trace. PCB is exposed and at one deep spot there is signal. What substance can be used to solder a wire on such a non metallic spot?

I’ve a cracked board, with 17 traces each one approx 1mm thick with a 1mm gap, the crack runs across the 17 traces. I’m a newbie, the board is scrap but I’d like to try and sort it. My question is can you use solder paste on damage like this, I don’t have your dexterity to try and run wire for each one!

Is following the old traces with the new wire or even using the exact same length of wire as the old traces particularly important? I doubt it would in most cases, although I'd imagine it's much more important to make sure the new wiring is properly secured to help prevent tearing of any remaining trace.

It looks on video like the wire is too big. However, it is pretty small. Nice job!

Hi. I've watched two of your vids on repeat for days now haha. Could you help me out on this? I've broken solder pad-rings on my mouse PCB while trying to replace the mouse switches. Do I need to wrap the wire around the legs of the Mouse switch and then bring the wire through the hole and then solder it to the trace? This is basically the fix I'm trying to follow. "All three pads are gone. But you need only the top and middle pad. The third pad is not connected. What I would do is glue in the switch from the top side, let the glue dry. Then use a small wire and either wrap it around the leg of the switch or stick it into the hole, and solder it. The top leg you can then connect to the ground plane next to it. You will need to remove the green solder resist a bit beforehand. The middle leg you need to reconnect to that trace. So you'll have to scratch the green solder resist off that diagonal part of the trace and solder your wire to that connection."

Amazing! It's so clean!

Excuse me what camera/lens do you use to work?

Hey , useful , but not for my case I have a multimeter , and the traces that are crossed by the switch contacts are damaged I am thinking about recovering the traces from another card , and solder them to the multimeter , where it still is some .and to glue it with some epoxy . Let's see Do you have another idea ?

What microscope do you use?

perfection! only thing missing is what specific brand/kind of glue do you use or recommend?

This is great for traces, what about where the pad is damaged, do you have a tactic for that?

I've got a broken PCB on my 3090 GPU Any advice on what to get to have a go? May as well before I bin it lol

What kind of microscope are you using?

Great content Sir! What type of wire do you use when doing a pcb trace repair. Appreciate the help❤️

What if it's a trace that had a solder point on it like where a surface mount capacitor goes?

Excelent tutorial What king of tape Is it? Thanks

Thanks, gauge of the copper joining cable ?

May I suggest a good trick I have discovered for removing trace coating? I do board mods where I cut PCB traces to add smd resistors and I remove the green trace coating with an engraver pen instead of scraping it with an exact knife. It works very fast and leaves clean shiny exposed copper traces. Also in my case with the traces I work on, the engraver is just the exact width of the trace so it works like an absolute charm.

That's all fine and dandy, nice work but what about traces going to a controller chip? I have had several traces burn up and/or lifted up after removing a controller chip, bad technique I know but it happens. Maybe you could show how to fix them. Thanks.