Replacing headphone jacks on Thinkpads

[jfenton]

Hi folks,Has anybody got advice/experience on replacing line out jacks on a Thinkpad R61 or similar?The headphone cord was ripped out of the socket & i think the contacts have been damaged so a stripdown & replacement is envisaged-i'm ok on fine soldering.

[Jason404]

Same happened with my X31. The contacts for it seem to use different layers within the motherboard, so I would assume some pretty expert soldering skills would be required.

[rkawakami]

Depending upon the design of the audio jacks, you might have to replace all of them if they have been molded into one piece of plastic. That, and combined with the possibility of through-hole mounting, would make for a tough replacement. Not saying that it can't be done, but you're going to need a solder sucker and/or wick, a fine-tipped soldering iron (preferably temperature controlled) and some luck finding a suitable replacement jack(s). One source would obviously be another R61 motherboard; maybe an R60 if they used the same jacks. You may be very lucky if Lenovo, or whoever built the motherboard, used off-the-shelf components that would be available from the likes of Mouser.com or Digikey.com.

[Jason404]

I am certain that everything is surface mounted, which was apparently pioneered by IBM. Having now read a bit more about this, this page says that specialist equipment would be required for any reworking, but I suppose that this is a relatively simple component:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology

From looking at the headphone socket that has broken off my X31's motherboard, I'm pretty sure that 'vias' have also been used, which must complicate things further:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_(electronics)

[rkawakami]

Vias themselves would not complicate the repair, unless the board has been physically damaged. All that a via does is to connect two or more layers of the circuit board together. Think of it as simply a wire that is inserted through the board and that's soldered on either end. Granted, this "wire" can also be considered a "tunnel" into which the leg of a component can be soldered if the hole is big enough.

[jfenton]

Thanks everybody for your help.
J Fenton