Sony KP-53S35 Signal Board "A"

After this electronic vulture picked clean the power handling board "G", attention turned to the other main circuit board at the bottom of a Sony KP-53S35 TV. There is a big letter "A" marked on the board, but I'm going to call it the signal board because this is where video signals enter the TV. In the lower-right corner are two entry point for RF. (One for UHF and one for VHF?) Adjacent to them are a few sets of RCA jacks for composite video + stereo audio. Finally, this TV's premium video option in the form of a S-Video connector in addition to composite video and stereo audio.

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Again there were component heat sinks that were very good at their job, making them difficult to unsolder with heat.

So just as before, I turned to mechanical means, but a refined version: instead of ripping them out with brute force, I tried to drill out the attachment points.

It is a challenge to make a drill bit stay on point while drilling into the conical profile of a solder joint, but it was easier once things got started. This approach is a trade-off: the brute-force way is fast and appropriate when I don't care much about damaging parts. The drill method is slower but leaves components better preserved. In this specific case, I'd like to get it up and running again. More details on the next post.

But it's not all about removing big beefy heat sinks, this board also presented opportunity to practice delicacy. The power board was composed exclusively of through-hole parts, which is reasonable considering its job. In contrast, the signal board dealt with lower power levels and employed a few surface mount devices scattered here and there. This is an ideal test case to see if a paint-stripping heat gun can be used to remove surface mount devices (SMD).

Great news - it worked! And since SMD parts have far smaller surface area and less raw metal, it took only about 20-30 seconds of the heat gun on high before a pair of pliers were able to gently lift the part. I'm going to continue practicing this mechanical removal process for a while before I worry about function. So it is still unknown whether the chip has suffered heat damage.

The signal board had a lot of empty space, reserved for components that were never installed. Best guess: this circuit board supported multiple televisions and these components were to support features that were absent from this specific TV.

At the end of the afternoon, the board is pretty bare and showing signs of heat stress. What pieces did I pull off this board? That's the topic of the next post...

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