PSA: My soldering iron tip ate through a ribbon cable on a Canon A-1 and I almost cost myself a full rebuild

Casey Thompson · 2026-10-27T09:20:04.187403+00:00

I was replacing the light seals on a customer's Canon A-1 on Tuesday night and got careless with my iron, and the tip slipped right into the flex ribbon near the shutter magnet. That cable is paper thin and I nicked two traces about half a millimeter from the edge, which meant the meter circuit went dead on my bench test. I spent 40 minutes with a magnifier and a scrap of 30 gauge wire bridging the cut, and it held at 12 ohms, but I got lucky. The real problem was that I had the iron set to 750F for a ground joint and forgot to turn it down before moving to the delicate stuff. Now I keep a cheap tip thermometer on the bench and check it before any ribbon work. Has anyone found a good way to shield flex cables during seal jobs, or do you just pull the whole board first?

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PSA: My soldering iron tip ate through a ribbon cable on a Canon A-1 and I almost cost myself a full rebuild | Camera Repairers - Free To Speak