Need help with fine soldering to make low profile right angle USB C plug

[alex ezorsky-lie]

I looked everywhere for a super low profile right angle usb-c male connector and couldn't find one so I figured I'd make one. I bought a cheap male to female adapter cord and took off the sheathing. I melted the solder points on one side to de-solder, bent the plug 90 degrees and then had to try re-connecting the 12 little pins to their solder points. I had a bunch of old failed attempts lying around so I yanked those pin strips out and used them as flat little wires to bridge the gaps. I got a fine point iron and tried my best to solder without bridging gaps. You can see in the photo below my best effort. Unfortunately there were still gaps and fixing them screwed everything up and I failed again.

Any suggestions for wire type, soldering methods, or even alternative ideas greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[dave9]

The picture doesn't give me any idea of what it looked like before trying to solder it.

A couple things I would do are, have the plug, plugged into a mating socket, both to provide a minor amount of heatsinking of the pins, and to hold them in place if the plastic starts to melt.

I'd use much less solder and a lot of flux, and if gaps were still bridged then I'd pull solder off with desoldering braid that had flux added.

One thing I'm wondering is how you intend to mechanically fortify this? I've done some pretty creative epoxy jobs in the past but suspect that once you had enough epoxy on it to be strong enough, it's not going to be very low profile. If it doesn't end up very low profile, there are several right angle USB-C male terminated cords on eBay.

I also wonder if you'd have better luck just getting rid of the PCB, bending the USB-C's pins outward to solder each wire in turn with heatshrink tubing on them, then bending them down to a right angle, though the issue of mechanical fortification is still present.

As far as that goes you could get a pre-made right angle cable and start shaving away the plastic to see how low profile you can get it to be. Ultimately I suspect that you couldn't find exactly what you wanted already made, because it wouldn't be mechanically fit, would break too easily. I'm also wondering how you intend to remove the plug once plugged in?

Anyway I'd get a couple of these and start carving on one to see how much material can be removed:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/90-Degree-...ast-Data-Sync-Charger-Cable-Cord/232753983444