one of my accounts tagged me in a facebook call for help. a friend of his had posted an image of a broken HDMI port on his nephew’s xbox one. he needed it fixed. asked about anyone local that could micro solder. fortunately we do that kind of thing, right here in hattiesburg. he had just gotten it back from a local computer repair shop that had it for 3 weeks and didn’t do anything to fix it. we were actually able to reuse the broken part and have it back to him fully repaired and strengthened in less than 24 hours.

obligatory “before” shot. the port had just ripped clean off.

well, almost clean. let’s take a closer look.

yup, a torn trace.

first thing i like to do is to wick away the old solder and reapply my preferred solder mix.

then i lay down the old port and reflow each pin one by one. care must be taken not to bridge any pins. they are very close to each other.

the next part of the fix was to try to reinforce the body of the port. it’s not the best design and care must be taken when inserting and removing or repetitive wiggling. the metal pieces shown in the following photo are just the covering for the port. a metal guide and frame to hold the cable. this must be remounted and secured.

next is to focus on rebuilding the broken trace. tiny wire, about the diameter of a human hair is used to reattached the broken path.

let’s step back and take an overall look to the almost finished process.

obligatory dime comparison shot.

i like to finish up with a reinforcing resin. i use it around any and all areas that may help to strengthen the base against a future issue.

closeup of the resin covering the now reattached pins.

my goal is to have a repair that is actually stronger than before it was broken. to take a somewhat flawed design and make it better. not only to repair what was broken, but to improve the strength so that it doesn’t happen again. of course, any thing can be broken with the right circumstances, but we don’t want it to happen because of a lazy inadequate repair. once i’m finished with a repair, i want to to stay fixed. comparison shot to the identical HDMI port nearby that is not broken.

if you find you need a device repaired, please contact me with some details and we will talk about a solution. thanks for coming along with me on this repair journey!