A friend has a USB flash drive on which the SMD USB connector broke off. When it broke, it pulled the pad traces off the board with the solder. We are trying to think of a way to reconnect the traces long enough to recover the data on the drive. We thought of filling the gaps in the coating where the pads were with solder, but one of them has an indentation that I am afraid would make solder flow onto a nearly adjacent component.
Any ideas for making a temporary connection?
Best Answer
Using small wires where the PCB traces used to be is probably the best option.
There are even professional standards about how to do this kind of rework:
http://www.ipc.org/4.0_Knowledge/4.1_Standards/7721-chg2.pdf (The last page of the document seems very relevant to your question.)
Note: I still have a SONY Walkman (tm) where the battery had leaked and an entire pin of an IC got eaten away. I fixed it by carefully milling away the IC's housing until I was able to solder a tiny wire onto the IC's bond wire. The Walkman is still good as new.