DIY Ergodox in sorry state

[stevedreams]

Hello, I've inherited this DIY ergodox, that's in a very sorry state. The original owner never completed the assembly (upto but not including soldering the switches). I would like to complete the project, but as I said, it's in a very sorry state. I'm not very advanced in the world of electrics so I hopesomeone can point me in the right direction.

Photos of the PCB's: https://imgur.com/a/kxCTkcc

In particular there is a lost of rust and (I assume) copper oxide around the soldered diodes. I've done a first pass at cleaning this with some alcohol, but it still needs a lot of work. With respect to this I see the following options:

- Get rid of all the diodes, clean up, start again.
- Get rid of the worst offenders, clean up and replace them.
- Just test the diodes, replacing any that don't work. (I don't have a voltmeter/ampmeter, but I can easily borrow one)

With repsect to replacing the diodes: I removed one to see what kind of damage was underneath (5:13). However, I am really struggling to "unclog" the hole to place a new diode in , any hints on how to do this?

Thankyou for any guidance you can give!

[Findecanor]

Yeah, that looks like it was damaged with water or acid or something ...

A "solder-sucker" while the solder is being heated with the soldering iron is usually what is used to get solder from a hole.
If the holes can't be used, alternatives available here are to replace a diode with a surface-mount diode, or with a diode mounted inside a switch.

BTW, did you get any parts for a case? Is it an acrylic one with a thick plastic plate? That would explain why the diodes are on the underside and not the top.

[stevedreams]

Yes, I've got the acrylic case. I'll look into the solder-sucker. Thanks

[vvp]

Looks like the original owner used something damaging instead of soldering flux or bathed in something nasty after soldering ...

You likely do not need to de-solder everything. You should clean everything and if the traces are not physically damaged then re-flowing the solder should be enough.

If you are not skilled with soldering then google how a good solder joint should look like. Use a soldering iron with temperature control so that you do not overheat the joints and do not lift pads.

[stevedreams]

Thanks for the help. An update, I desoldered everything except the teensy and cleaned up, discovered some of the diodes were loose. The right hand side works completely fine, but I resoldered my replacement IO expander (the original had a huge amount of corrosion difficult to see in the images) in the wrong orientation. So I have to decide to try to desolder that without destroying the pins (probably beyond my skill level, solder sucker very difficult for me to use in all the adjacent pins) or just clip them, desolder it, and order another IO expander.