Help please!!! Christmas emergency!!!!!!

[Maryblake23]

I'm a newbie trying desperately to put the mintyboost 3.0 together for my husband for Christmas. Here's the thing: ive been through FOUR packs and every GD time I put the batteries in the area of C4 gets hot as a soldering tool! The battery case seems fine but what am I doing wrong??? I'm following the directions (FOUR times!) exactly. There is no way it's supposed to get that hot without even being plugged into a device. I'm so frustrated!!!!!!!!

[JD3]

Take a clear picture of both sides of the build and post them here.

Then either Adafruit Support or another builder can look them over.

Most of the time its something very simple. Don't get frustrated

[adafruit_support_bill]

As JD3 says, post some photos. Aside from soldering problems, the most common issue that causes things to heat up is if the boost converter chip is installed backwards. The notch in the chip should line up with the one in the printed outline on the top of the board.

[Maryblake23]

M photos are 1MB and the site won't let me post them! can I send through email ?

[adafruit_support_rick]

Your photo program should allow you to save them as JPEG or PNG. If they are still too large, the program should also allow you to resample them to a smaller number of pixels. 800x600 is usually a good size.

[Maryblake23]

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[Maryblake23]

My soldering suuuuuuuuuucks.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Don't panic! It looks repairable. The yellow circled areas appear to be solder-bridges that will cause a short circuit. You need to remove the excess solder to separate those contacts. A 'solder-sucker' or 'solder wick' can be helpful here.

The red circled areas appear to be incompletely soldered. Use a clean-hot iron and reheat the joint to add more solder.

It might be good to start with a read-through of our soldering guide. http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-guid ... ring/tools

[Maryblake23]

I'm on it! Thank thank you thank you!

[Maryblake23]

Great. I managed to melt the battery leads with one swipe of my soldering iron! Aaaarrrggghh! OK, I'm going to post pics of another board that was heating up and try to fix THAT one. I officially need a drink now.

[adafruit_support_bill]

I managed to melt the battery leads with one swipe of my soldering iron!

There is usually more than enough wire there. You can just clip them a little shorter and strip off some insulation on the ends.

[Maryblake23]

then what? twist then solder? Man, I'm a total tard. I'll never get this finished!!!

[Maryblake23]

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screw it!!! Here's the other board from my third failure. Any clues to why it's overheating? The board heats, not the battery.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Those rough-lumpy looking joints are cold joints (see here: http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-guid ... n-problems) Those by them selves should not cause overheating. Overheating usually means you have a short circuit somewhere. There are a few places on the back side where the solder spills over from the solder joint to an adjacent trace. The green solder-mask usually prevents actual contact, but any small hole in the mask can result in a short circuit. best to keep the solder in the joint itself. Another thing I see is that there is a lot of solder on the top-side of the board. Typically, there should be only a small amount that wicks through the solder hole when you solder from the other side. It is possible that some of that excess solder has formed a short-circuit under one of the components.

[JD3]

If you are looking for help soldering, maybe an amateur radio operator (or ham) in your area might be able to help.

You can look to see if there is a ham radio group in your area and ask around?

Where do you live? (general area, don't need specifics, like street)