What causes a PCB to bubble?

[NewNeoOwner]

I recently bought a game from a member here and the transaction went well. The game works fine so far. As I do with all games purchased online I opened it up to check things out, and was surprised to see the second board.

What would cause this? Should I be concerned about the game breaking? Is there anything I can do?

 

[Kid Panda]

Holy smokes, I would think that would take a massive amount of heat to make that type of bubbling. WOW.

 

[Giga_Power32bit]

Could it have been water damaged at one time?

 

[bubba966]

At least it's only a copy of Puzzled, so it shouldn't be too bad to replace at a later date if it craps out on you.

 

[Xian Xi]

Shit, someone was obviously breaking records on that game. They brought the heat.

 

[NewNeoOwner]

Going by the discoloration I thought heat too, but can those chips get that hot? Maybe there was a prob in the cab it came from. This was only visible on board 2, board 1 is in perfect shape. I was told it works and that's what matters most. I'm assuming that as long as the connections are still good then the cart will remain working. They don't need to be flat.

However I have a problem with another game which I'll put in its own topic.

 

[aha2940]

The board can get very hot if you try to remove the chips with a high-wattage soldering iron and bend. Are the solders machine-made? or do they look man-made? post a close-up picture of the solder side of the board.

Regards.

 

[NewNeoOwner]

The board can get very hot if you try to remove the chips with a high-wattage soldering iron and bend. Are the solders machine-made? or do they look man-made? post a close-up picture of the solder side of the board.

Regards.

You have both pics right there. I could get a pic of the full view but it would be zoomed out a bit. I resized them just a tad so the attach feature would work.

 

[xsq]

looks machine soldered to me. Might even have been an error in production that slipped by... but yeah, as long as it works I wouldn't worry.

Shit, someone was obviously breaking records on that game. They brought the heat.

^^

 

[aha2940]

I remembered once I saw a board where someone tried to reflow sloders using a heat gun and the board bubbldd like that. My point is that I do not think chips themselves can cause such heat, something else happened to this board.


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[SNKorSWM]

The odd part is that some of the bubbling appears in places with no chips, not even on the other board.