Starlink Repair - Digi-key refused my order. 

I did love Alex’s statement “all items are in stock unless the item is not in stock”

That device is a Starlink dish that's been modified to fit into a flat mount for placement on top of a vehicle. It's not really a prototype, but an end user modified device. That connector is the Ethernet interface with Power over Ethernet. The other similar pinned connector is the motor control connection for rotation and tilt of the dish (before it was modified).

I find it bizarre how they flagged someone who created an account - provided full name, business name, address and phone number - something they could quickly look up and see that you're an established repair shop (with a popular RU-vid channel) and still gave you a hard time. Yet, they happily sent the same items to a "guest customer"? I would think the person checking out as a guest would have something more to hide than the person making the effort to create a business account and passing on their full details. Very silly of Digi-key.

I’m middle eastern too, I take it as a compliment when everyone assumes you’re an explosives engineer

I had a similar issue with DigiKey where they were claiming I was on a "US Denied List" simply based off my name. I provided them ID and eventually got the chip I ordered but they need to do better than blindly assume based off a name.

"All items are in stock unless the item is not in stock". Now that's what I call accurate, helpful customer information! 🤣

Haha. No bombs for Alex

I remember making those types of repairs when I had a summer job during my years in university while earning my EE degree. The worst ones were where some yahoo with a Weller soldering 'gun' tried to remove DIP packages from PCB's without the use of solder-wick. I would find a half-dozen traces torn off the board and quite a few through-holes that were torn out. I used wire-wrap wire and a DS100 soldering station to clean up the mess, tack down to what was left of the traces and glue that in place while installing a replacement DIP package. The PCB's cost thousands of dollars (1980's dollars) so four or five hours of labor and it was still worth it. I think our cut-off point for repairs was more than 8 hours of labor on any board.

"all items are in stock. Unless the item is not in stock." Best statement ever.

I once tried to order a component manufactured in Europe, where I live. I've been told that this component could not be exported outside the US...

Excellent work again Alex , many many years ago mid 90s I did a lot of very close SMT work , using a stereoscopic microscope , and the issue was " tremble" , so I made a few reverse pantograph manipulators to reduce the movements I made to allow very accurate positioning and close work , then you just have surface tension to deal with, the most useful thing was a spring biased holder to make a component or pad stay put , we didn't have the UV setting glues or solder paste , just liquid flux and determination , I even made a IR heater with barn doors to allow selective heating and removal of components

I also had a negative experience with them recently-- when I placed an order it didn't empty my cart, it was like it never completed, and it didn't appear in my order history so I placed the order again. However, within a few minutes the original order went through, so I had a double order. I immediately contacted their customer service to cancel the order and was told it had been processed, and so that wasn't possible. Seriously, within 15 minutes?! Mind you, it took several days to ship, so I don't know what they did that couldn’t be canceled. Next time I'll use another distributor, completely ridiculous!

That prototype looks a lot like a phased array antenna, the same kind of antenna used for the Starlink system.

That one, for some reason, is my favourite repair video so far! The micro-craftsmanship is excellent - and I'm not even an electronics engineer!

I had a similar experience with Digi-Key. I needed to send them some extra ID and proof for them to ship my order and I’m in Australia with a pretty common name. I doubt it was any suspicion to do with your name - I think their security measures are overly strict for everyone.

i honestly would have thought if the pad was gone, that was basically it - this was the work of a pure surgeon. bloody good work!

Thank you so much for your videos and your time brother. I’ve been watching religiously for a few years now and you’ve helped me up my soldering game by a metric ton. I’m an electrician by trade and I also love fixing electronics around the house and for family. You’re an inspiration and I wish you and your whole family nothing but success and happiness. You work so hard and that’s a dying trait with some of the new generation. Again, thank you and selam from Australia. Big fan Ali, you’re a legend.

Thanks Alli, You are an amazing technician, thanks for sharing your skills and wisdom.

Alex…you are the man! Don’t change a thing on your channel. You are realistic! You make mistakes just like me when or anybody else, but your success rate is incredibly high! Keep it up my friend

About microscopes, it’s also the optics. Amazing to see stuff like this that would appear magic to people just a few decades ago.

This man is an electronics surgeon. A lot of people watching this video don't know how hard what he did in this video is. I tried to replace a micro USB port with ript traces on a device. That was a nightmare. I could not imagine how hard this would be for somebody like me. His skills are on a completely different level

That is a starlink dish, that is being converted to a vehicle roof top mount, (you cut the back out of it, so it sits flat on the roof of the vehicle.)

These Starlink antennas are works of art. When i decommission mine I'll be putting it on a wall or displaycase.

Sadly its because your name is on a prohibited trade list, these can be anything from terrorists to those who commit financial fraud and as you can imagine the name is fairly common. I worked for an American company overseas that sold items that fell under ITAR, this list was scanned for every order, to proceed it either had to be manually reviewed or id requested to prove you were not the listed individual. Its dumb but thats how it is.

I love how the plot twist is that he just ordered the component as guest, **The more you know**

Great to see that you are keeping the differential pairs coupled by following the path of the original traces. This should keep the signal integrity and thus the device working reliably.

You did an excellent job on those wires and putting them on the parts the pcb board and you use the color so it won't do short circuit if moved or anything. Truly outstanding work

Love the work you have done Alex. I have learned alot from your videos. It is sad a company had this view on a name ordering parts. Keep on Keepin on Brother!

Alex, your link to the microscope takes us to a micro-HDMI cable instead of the microscope. Just wanted you to know. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and time with us. Great video!

Well Alex, we live in a world of idiots, we have our fair share in the UK too. The only thing we all can do is avoid the idiots and let them drive their businesses into the ground. Keep up the good work.

It's just amazing how you have steady hands working on those tiny connections!!!

I absolutely live for watching your videos Alex. Your work is absolutely beautiful.

Dear alex once again it is a good example for this type of problems and it is a masterpiece. Eventhou i watched it with my welders google s for UV protection :)))

First, this was one of the most fun video's I've seen. i'm impressed with the work flow, the confidence, and the perfect temps for the soldering iron, flux being applied liberally and ensuring every possible point is perfect. I learned much just from watching the workflow. First time finding the channel, so thanks for totally making a simple repair a fun show to watch. My hunches on this deice.. If this is a communications device, It's probably digital and should be totally fine. I know with analog devices there was always the risk of capacitances being an issue in the traces. Thus the board layout always took into account the capacitance in the traces adding to the subtracted from the schematic's required values as they can change values. It doesn't look like an an antenna, nor does it appear to be a broadcasting device (as nothing looks like high power / wattage) so if it is broadcasting it's probably still going to be on frequency since the amp boards would a different board / unit. I'd also bet they have another on order while this is repaired, which it will be promptly replaced with, and this fixed will be kept as a backup. Now I gotta watch more of your channel!

Alex, many thanks again for showing your work style and giving your experience to us.

your manual dexterity and fine motor skills are impressive.

I have seen something like this before. This could be a satellite antenna. The structure is similar to a Starlink satellite antenna.

You are getting very artistic with your wires. Half way through I was thinking about a screen shot.❤

I am sorry that you experienced discrimination in ordering parts. That is so disgusting. You're a good man doing good things for people.

Its a pleasure watching you do component replacement, I used to do it as well!

Whoa!! That is madd big 😅 glad you found the connector item @Alex

Happens to all of us mate, with digikey anyway. I had the same series of questions when my order included some high power IXYS mosfets that are used for among other things, high power radio transmitters, lasers and orbital solar arrays. ended up buying a similar part from mouser with no questions asked, as i'm a regular customer. I'm Australian btw.

This is amazing stuff to see, as a rando curious person. Oh cool, he's showing how they repair these tiny things. Next level watchmaker scale stuff. Thanks for showing off.

Fasinating to watch you make that repair. Impressive work.

That was a nice fix, however wires could be too thin. This is Starlink ethernet with power, and it is also used to heat the dish in the winter, it is up to 200 W on those wires ~48V. About 1A per wire. Not too much, but could be take into consideration for future Starlink repairs.

That work is incredibly small and fine. I wouldn't be wrong to compare this with vascular surgery or something like that. Great job. Wish you all the success.

OMG. The soldering stations you use are something I can only dream of affording. They are amazing. Just like your repair videos. Thank you and God bless!

your soldering skills are really miraculous ,good job

If it makes you feel anymore re-assured, I went through the same thing with Digit-Key. My last name is Brown.

That is a great fix. Think this will ever get them to consider their designs before ANY development!

I'd always tie to the far connector foot, not to a trace. I think I'd super glue the body of that ripped connector down. People will yank on it. Kynar wire, then Kapton tape for strain relief. For connectors, think mechanical strength first, then the electrical will follow. Too much strain relief is just enough. -10 year QCOM Wireless R&D Tech. Nice to see you work. Cheers, --bd

You always make it look so simple and easy. Very nice

You can’t use that connector to built a nuclear weapon, it’s not shielded against neutron flux.😂keep the great videos coming.

I have lot of trouble with custom clearance here in Greece when order from Digikey. All in all I had to pay twice the invoice for import tax, import sales tax and UPS clearance for what I had to sign a three years contract with UPS. Mouser is much more easy since they ship to proxy in Munich Germany (no customs issues at all to Germany). And from Germany it is redirected to Greece which is within Europa (also no customs).

As always an excellent job.....better than factory.....!!! My respect....!!!

Your work is Impeccable! I enjoy watching your videos very much. And Yes I bought some items from your store.

It looks like the connector has been physically ripped off of the board by the looks of the other traces. edit: I just realized the really cool thing about this channel. You can send something to Alex to be fixed and if you are lucky, you will be able to watch as he does it!

I always wondered what Leon ended up doing after he gave up being a hitman. 😅❤

Awesome repair skills as always👌 Keep up the good work 👍

Wow. This is very intricate work. Really shows at the end when you have your fingers for comparison

This is not a prototype device. It is a regular Starlink antenna PCB that has been pulled out of a Starlink dish.

Account issue will most likely be OFAC related and triggered by your name. UK based, but at a previous employment we had massive problems making payments to taxi drivers using a payment method linked to America due to this, so much so we eventually changed our payment method.

I appreciate you sharing your skills. PCB repair is an important skill....In the past I have repaired boards with failed components in the field...admittadly much larger thru hole components :) in these cases there was no option, as the PCB's were soldered to hundreds of wires in the chassis, and the pcb was 2'x3'..... not to mention that spares just did not exist.

JazakAllah hu khair posting this type of video it helps person like me who wanna be like you Master,Hussain ur working style teach us many things.

They have a good profiling web security. We all know Alex is capable of fixing and building a nuclear bomb or something.

Couldn’t resist the opportunity to shame a vendor 🤣

masterful work. I wish my hands were steady enough to pull off such soldering craftmanship.

Great job working around the issues!

Sad that prejudice is still rampant. Great repair! I have been in the same situation with PC boars many times, and I use 30 gauge wire wrap wire to repair such trace tears, once the tracks are repaired, I epoxy over them to keep them in place and to protect them as well. I didn't have the microscope, but I did have a magnifier visor!

The ground via stitching, and the way the traces hug each other indicates that each of the pins were originally differential pairs. Do you do anything special to insure they maintain length and impedance matching when replacing the traces?

Awesome surgery! I do same type of repairs.I just discovered your channel and will be watching.thanks very much for videos!

Love that when you cut the wire, the great microscope shows the knife and it looks like something John Rambo would use =)

Isn't it better to add some glue around that connector?

Many years ago, I lived internationally and was ordering some developer tools software from Apple. There was an export control section. It was *impressively detailed*. I don't remember 100% the list, but it had yes/no questions for 5+ areas: Do you, or your facility work on uranium enrichment, plutonium enrichment, heavy water, chemical or biological weapons. I was just imagining someone asking their boss, hey, do we enrich plutonium, or *just* uranium, to make sure they got the questions right? :)

That was awesome! Please keep the good work in stock! :)

Awesome work!! Every video is a treat! You're an asset to RU-vid, sir!

Looks like a microwave antenna. Sure it's not a modified Starlink dish?

Well, ain't ordering from Digi-Key.

Brought back a lot of memories. Thanks m8.

The pricesion, the steady hands , this is no longer but Talent ! !😅

Pretty sure Dave Jones of EEV Blog has mentioned Digikey's ID checking crap being a pain before too. I expect name didn't help, but it seems to be a pain of any working with Digikey. I avoid them myself prefering farnel, mouser, rs-online....

What you had happen (most likely) was you got flagged by a piece of software doing what's known as "denied party screening" - basically, there are lists of people, entities, governments, etc. that the US says businesses cannot sell to, for various reasons. Sometimes it's because of trade restrictions, sometimes it's sensitive technology, and sometimes it's because of lists of people who the US doesn't like. For each transaction the business makes, they run it through this software and the software says "hey I don't think you're supposed to do business with this entity because it might match something on a list". I'm not going to make any comment about why or how your transaction got flagged, but I've seen it happen more than once. Generally speaking when this happens it triggers either a blanket denial of the transaction, or sometimes the business can reach out and try to establish identity in order to complete the sale. Sounds like in this case they may have tried to work with you but their process sucks. I'm glad you managed to find a workaround!

I remember seeing this posted on Reddit asking for advice. Nice job fixing it!

Your soldering skills are impeccable. 👍

Secretly you are building a portal towards 9th dimension 😂

oof sad to hear about digikey doing this

I'm learning so much and enjoying your videos.😊

Digi-Key is really easy to use. You don't need an account. They have a guest checkout. Without an account, itll be hard to track past invoices, etc.

user modified starlink dish

If someone manages to ravage a small connector like this, then they should pay three times the usual price as punishment!

Amazing work. Thanks for sharing. 👏👏

Wow, so awesome, skill involved is amazing; renew my faith in humanity to go the distance.

Maybe you would build a bomb, better than factory?

Wow, so they will sell to random people they can't verify, but if you make a business account suddenly there's more checks. I think at best maybe there's some kind of process checks they have to do for a business account, but it shouldn't cancel an entire order if the business account isn't giving you anything special for that order. Definitely suspicious of them to do that. Could very easily be motivated by xenophobia, just like a "random" airport search. I hope it was just some benign error of process, but it could just as easily be something malicious.

The skill in this video is amazing.

That was cool how you repaired the PCB like! Good as new. The right tools does the job right! Good stuff

Very good job, Alex! The reaction from Digikey was pure racism. Like @Mee10793 says: Idiots!

Prototype is a prototype for a reason. When I saw you grab the sticky traces I was shocked you weren't just going to use enameled wire or something and make the connections.

Never seen this kind of repair before, super intriguing and alex is super hilarious

Your work is amazing. Thank you.