OK, HOW I DID IT !!! First, I made a tool, a heat shield. I made this out of a piece of tin from an Altoids box. I used a set of relay holes on the circuit board to mark on this piece of tin the precise location of all ten holes with a needle. Then I put the piece of tin on a piece of wood, I wanted a soft backing, and I punched the holes with a nail. I made the holes big enough for the soldered relay pins to poke through the holes. Further more, because I punched the holes with a nail into wood, the wood side of the tin was pushed out around each hole.
I used tin snips to cut out the rectangle larger than the relay area, forty five cuts in the corners of the shield, folded the sides up perhaps 20 degrees. What I have made here is a heat shield. The poked through metal from punching holes holds the heat shield up off the PC board. But the soldered pins all show on the top side of the heat shield. The heat shield spread out more than a quarter of an inch beyond the pins. Now, I placed the PC board across two piles of books so that the offending relay is below. I gently gripped the relay with a vice-grips with a piece of leather between the vice-grips and the relay. the pile of books was tall enough that the vice-grips hung down between them, putting weight pulling on the relay out of the board. Now. I took a hand held mini-butane torch, cost fifteen dollars at the local hardware store, and flamed ALL the pins at once. In seconds, the vice-grips pulled the relay out of the holes. Relays all fine. PC board fine. Piece of cake. E-mail me if you want a picture of the heat shield. Good luck, Fred - KT5X K2 # 700 _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
