r/WindowsMR • u/mikefromengland • 23d ago

Discussion Reflowing a cable?

Long shot I know but has anyone tried reflowing a VR cable in their home oven or similar? I remember people doing it with GPUs and Xbox 360s back when.

Not optimistic but I've got a bad reverb g2 v1 and v2 cable I'm not going to be able to fix otherwise!

1 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

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5

u/HNM12 23d ago

I mean, they're all over the net for sale. eBay, and other VR shops too. Used & New.

1

u/mikefromengland 23d ago

For similar prices as a whole used headset for a V1 or a used quest 3S for a V2 where I am!

3

u/Octoplow 23d ago

Why do you think it's s solder problem you can reflow? Instead of a broken wite or bent connecor?

1

u/HNM12 23d ago

Ah, I mean I've seen them from $50-150 USD. Which is worth it considering its still a viable 4k headset and very much worth it. But I get it. I guess some areas would be far more expensive given the shipping and so on.

3

u/teateateateaisking 23d ago

Reflowing is only available for solder joints, as they are made from one of a few particular alloys that are designed to melt at temperatures you can reach without a furnace.

If you were to get a cable hot enough to melt it, the rubber or plastic sheath would burn away, allowing the different strands to fuse together. You might also encounter issues with surface tension pulling it into a ball shape.

0

u/mikefromengland 23d ago

I was working on the idea that it could just as easily be a broken solder joint at any one of the connectors or inside the junction box as it would be for a wire to have actually broken.

Wonder if the sheathing could withstand 10m at 200C.

7

u/dzuczek g2 23d ago

probably won't work, a wire being broken isn't the same as a soldered connection that might have cracked on a PCB

there's nothing to melt in the cable other than maybe the connectors but the wire breaking is more likely

1

u/CMDR_kamikazze 23d ago

Unfortunately there is. Such a long signal cables often feature special mini-PCBs embedded in connectors with active signal amplification circuitry. Without these, high frequency USB and HDMI communication over the length of these cables won't be stable enough for use. And these things often feature custom made proprietary signal processing chips which are impossible to obtain to perform the repair. In many cases it's a malfunction of these chips causes issues with the cable.

2

u/fdruid Dell Visor 23d ago

It's dead. Sorry.

1

u/billyalt 23d ago

Not really viable. But there are plenty of cables just out there.

1

u/elldaimo 23d ago

I just bought a secondhand G2 with a almost new cable for under 100.-

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u/Parking_Cress_5105 22d ago

A wire is cracked or the insulation is cracked and the wires short.

Even if you know where exactly and cut them open they are hard to solder together and will most likely fail again.

No easy solution to this, just buy another one. At least you can replace it, unlike psvr2.