Remove a through hole component

- We all make mistakes, and when you solder, making a mistake is not the end of the world. They're usually pretty easy to fix. Today, we're going to look at how to desolder a through-hole component. In this example, we'll be looking at these tiny, three-millimeter LEDs right here and how to desolder it from the board. It's fairly easy. You might think you can just heat the board up and pull it out. Generally, that's not a good idea. I've seen people do it, but you're grabbing at it. You're trying to flow two wires that are coming out or two leads from the LED, and it's just difficult. The proper way to do it is to use a solder sucker or a desoldering pump or vacuum pump. And you can pick these up for a couple of dollars all the way up to $50 or more. I'll tell you, I like this really inexpensive one. And the reason I like this one is it's inexpensive and it just lasts forever, and it just works. It's as simple as that. The concept behind it is you press this plunger and then there's a button here, and you press the button and it creates a small vacuum, and it can suck out the solder. This tip will not melt with your soldering iron. That's really important to understand because a lot of times people put their tip too far away from the solder and it doesn't work. You can get it right in there. It's not going to melt. The other thing that you should know is you can get a silicone tubing, really any size that fits the tip of your desoldering pump. And if you add this to your desoldering pump, it is a game changer. Using a desoldering pump can be a little tricky, but adding this little piece of rubber to it... Shouldn't have taken mine off. Here we go. Adding this little piece of rubber in there allows you to go right over the joint and suck up all the solder that's been melted by the soldering iron. Now, if you look closely at this one, it looks like it's a little dirty, but it's not too bad. That residue there is actually the flux, and that's what you want to wash off after you've completed a project. So that's a great example of that. In my case, it looks pretty good. I'm just going to reheat it and try and remove the solder. So I'll take my soldering iron. I'll make sure the tip is nice and clean. I'll charge the pump. I'll go right in there, heat it up and get really close to that solder joint. Put the silicone tubing right over it, press the button. And if you look close, most of that solder is gone, and I can eject it, and I've got a tiny piece of solder. Hopefully you can see it on camera. It's only a little bit. Let's go ahead and do the other one. Pump is ready to go, heat it up, get it right over the joint. Desolder, and it all comes out. Now, sometimes you have to do it more than once. Let's just see if this will come out. I'll take this out and take the little LED, and it's still a little stuck. So let's do it one more time. Very common, you might have to do it two or three times on a joint, heat the joint up. I didn't see any solder come out of that one. And that's it, I can see how loose it is. Maybe one more time with this last one. And the LED is out. That's how easy it is. All you need is a $10 desoldering pump, a little piece of tubing. Hopefully you have one. Even if you have to buy it, it's a couple of pennies. Try and get just a foot of it, and make sure that it's pure silicone, and that way it won't melt. And that's it. That's how you remove a component from a PCB.