6 ms·
Live reactions watching this video: Remove two screws from the bottom of the phone – easy, I can totally do this! Soften the glue and pull out the back – hmm,
by paxys 2y ago
Live reactions watching this video:
Remove two screws from the bottom of the phone – easy, I can totally do this!
Soften the glue and pull out the back – hmm, I guess it's doable if I can find replacement glue.
Disconnect dozens of cables and parts – wow, it's going to be hard to remember how everything goes back together.
Peel off protective foam from motherboard – is it even possible to replace this stuff?
CNC grind the existing 128GB NAND to dust – I should probably stop watching now...
- israrkhan 2y agoI was also blown away at CNC grinding step. Perhaps he did it because heat gun would have impacted other parts of the PCB. With grinding the impact was limited to Nand chip only. He eventually had to use heat to cleanup the residue.
- Joona 2y agoIt's more so the 128GB package is not worth that much, so it's easier to just delete it.
- nine_k 2y agoYou also need to be pretty precise with attaching the phone in an exact position, and grinding things with a very low margin of error, say, 0.05 mm along the vertical axis, in order to remove the chip but leave the PCB intact. Not for the faint of the heart. I suppose they have had several training rounds using badly broken phones first.
- duskwuff 2y ago> I suppose they have had several training rounds using badly broken phones first. Can't be very many of those yet. The iPhone 16 only became available for sale last Friday.
- tobyhinloopen 2y agoObviously he meant other broken phones, like older models or other brands entirely
- nine_k 2y agoYes, the flash chips are approximately the same in their mechanical properties. Milling speed, debris removal, depth of milling to keep the PCB intact, treatment of the PCB.afterwards to clear it and attach another chip. It all is best done several times on dead bodies before attempting a modification of the expensive target phone.
- johnwalkr 2y agoThat's trivial for a machinist to check before starting the milling operation though.
- justinclift 2y agoCould even be automated if they have probes handy. :)
- nine_k 2y agoYrs, as long as the milling machine is adequate. Hobby-level CNC devices may have harder time doing that, and pro / industrial devices cost many times the iPhone.
- godelski 2y agoFwiw, you can get a desktop CNC for a few hundred dollars (I mean they're very similar to 3d printers in design). You can get pretty good ones for under $5k. But yeah, getting that chip off with just heat looks pretty hard without affecting anything else. I'd still want a heat sink to pull away heat from other parts but I'm not at this skill level and overly cautious. But this does look doable. And since it's HN, I do encourage everyone to give more repair a go. Things like micro soldering are easier than you think. And remember than your phones can be turned into servers (raspberry pi? How about my old nexus?). Though I'd love to hear if people know how to do this stuff on iPhones because I plan on switching over. I guess no more bash scripting for automatic backup of all my photos and stuff to my server :'( someone please tell me there's a way )': https://all3dp.com/1/best-cnc-router-desktop-cnc-machine/ https://all3dp.com/1/best-cnc-router-desktop-cnc-machine/
- xp84 2y ago> Though I'd love to hear if people know how to do this stuff on iPhones Very little in the realm of "server" or "raspberry pi alternative" could be done with modern iPhones despite even a 2-year old iphone being OP in terms of hardware for most home server tasks. They really work hard to prevent any use besides what's officially blessed by Tim Apple himself. Whether that's "for your own good" or not is a matter of opinion, I happen to think it's lame but don't want to debate it.
- godelski 2y agoI'm not too worried about old iPhones since by then it's pretty likely to be jail broken and no issues there. I mean even if I brick it (and somehow can't recover; so, very unlikely) it was going to be e-waste anyways, right? As far as recycling goes, turning your old phone into a server is a big win. But I'm more interested in being able to use my current bash scripts that run on my Pixel. Backup is really the only important one since I can connect to my computers from anywhere to do anything else
- appendix-rock 2y agoDon’t count on that. There are still holes where certain iOS version ranges or iPhones to this day do not have a jailbreak available.
- omgtehlion 2y agoWith only hot air you would need a lot of heat and pulling, potentially displacing other parts nearby, because it seems like the nand flash is not just soldered, but additionally glued with some kind of adhesive.
- baybal2 2y ago[dead]
- rickdeckard 2y ago> Perhaps he did it because heat gun would have impacted other parts of the PCB Most of all the components on the other side of the PCB. Even if the NAND was not additionally covered in resin, due to the large amount of contacts (and probably large amount of grounded pins, which dissipate heat faster), alot of heat would be needed. More than the smaller components underneath need to just fall off then...
- foldr 2y agoThe components underneath shouldn't fall off. The surface tension of the solder should be enough to keep them in place. (That's how it's generally possible to reflow solder components to two sides of a board.) Of course, reflowing the components in an ad-hoc way is quite likely to cause other problems, so it's probably still a good idea to avoid it.
- Summerbud 2y agoCNC grinding part is so wild, it took my several replay to understand what is that
- tibbon 2y agoI wouldn't have thought to do it, but after seeing it, i think I could do this on a Bridgeport. I'm only so-so at machining, but I can make a Bridgeport grind with great precision in a rectangle!
- exabrial 2y agoI was actually thinking the same thing; a maintained milling machine can easily grind at those tolerances. Get your Z level be the most important so you don't cut too deep into the solder pads. The being said, I'm wondering if he used something like a cheap SainSmart CNC... sounded like a dentist drill
- cenamus 2y agoEven so, the solder pads are surely at least like 0.05 to 0.1mm thick, across the size of the 2cm chip that shouldn't be hard at all to get level enough
- txdv 2y agoIf you visit cities in China that are heavily invested in the electronics industry you could buy a cheaper iPhone 16 pro with 128GB and upgrade it to 1TB. But if you do that regularly, you probably have the money to buy the 1TB version outright.
- sfmike 2y agomake a friend there or friends with a booth worker and just ship it there talk over wechat shipping cost quite low
- bubaumba 2y agothere should be an audio socket hidden somewhere, you can open it by drilling a hole.... (old joke)
- faangguyindia 2y agoInb4 someone does it on a 4jaw chuck in a lathe
- wojokix 2y agohahaha yeah
- Someone 2y ago> Disconnect dozens of cables and parts – wow, it's going to be hard to remember how everything goes back together We didn’t invent writing, drawing, and photographing for nothing. 1. Have small storage boxes numbered 1 through 1000. 2. Before and after detaching anything, take photos (multiple, if needed) 3. Draw arrow/circle/… indicators on the photos to help you remember what to look at. 4. Whatever comes loose, put it in the next labeled box. 5. Take a photo of the filled box and the tool(s) you used to detach that part. 6. When putting things back together, work backwards through your photos.
- fragmede 2y agowe live in the future, just start recording video of everything. You probably have an old cellphone you could use, and you'll wish you had more angles if you do end up being to go back into the footage for something
- creshal 2y agoI don't think a GoPro can focus close enough to take detailed enough pictures of tiny components like these.
- meow_catrix 2y ago[dead]
- fragmede 2y agookay, edited to say old cellphone
- creshal 2y agoDoesn't really adress the basic problem, most old phones (and many new phones) don't have the sort of macro autofocus you'd need to keep a video recording at a high enough fidelity to keep track of millimetre-sized objects. Looking at various youtubers, even with semi-professional gear it can be a multi-second struggle to focus on much larger pieces of mechanical devices. Do that for 20-30 steps and you need an assistant or two to not lose track of what you're doing, and spend an hour in post editing out all the times you side tracked fighting the camera.
- csomar 2y ago> Disconnect dozens of cables and parts – wow, it's going to be hard to remember how everything goes back together. It's not going to be hard. You won't even need to note where everything goes. The sizes of the cables/parts are different and as a result you'll be able to match them up.
- factorialboy 2y ago> CNC grind the existing 128GB NAND to dust – I should probably stop watching now... Ah yes, Apple, the king of repairability!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]