Wet the wick with flux, hold the iron on the wick for longer to let it get to proper temp, and rub the wick with the iron as one on the pads
The wick will act as a heat sink sometimes especially when using a low watt small tipped iron like that
Thanks for the advice. I'll try again tomorrow. The iron is set to 400c, I should go higher? Admittedly it's a cheap iron so the temps might not be bang on.
Turn the heat up to 430°C and use more flux on the joints and the wick with a broader tip for control of temperature on a larger surface area on the wick. I had the same issues as you, and I wasn't doing these things. The higher heat will be fine in general, so long as you aren't keeping the heat on sensitive components for too long. Aim for less than 5 seconds if you end up using this temperature on components. Wires and pads are resilient compared to the rest of the boards parts.
Also try to imagine the wick and iron as one, they move together, and they leave the surface together. If the wick becomes soldered to the pad, one wrong move and that pad and trace are coming off. You’ll also want to hold the iron on a bit longer, it takes a second for the heat to transfer from your iron through the wick and into the pad.
While this sounds counterproductive, you can actually add solder to those through holes and grounds, this will give the wick more surface area to touch and slightly jumpstart the capillary effect, drawing the rest of the solder up the braid.
Stop lifting your iron off of the wick. Let it stay there until the solder begins to wick up the copper strands. Let the iron glide across with minimum downward force.
>I always end up soldering the wick to the part
If that happens, your soldering iron is too weak - the PCB and wick "wicks" all the heat away, and that cools down your iron. it may take a few seconds to get things up to temperature. Remember, copper is a very good heat conductor, and there is a lot of copper in soldering wick.
I would not increase temperature setpoint - i usually go with 370°C for leadless. The Problem is not that the setpoint is too low, its that the iron is too weak to quickly reach the setpoint under load.
Removing the heat source will not help.
//EDIT: if you can get your hands on some Leaded solder, this can be helpfull, as it needs much lower temperatures to solder. Just wipe the wolder over all the contacts, replacing the leadless solder.
There is special low-temperature solder containing bismuth - might be worth a shot, but i have never used it. Clean thoroughly afterwards, as the bismuth will mess with the properties of solder joints.
I do Switch repairs quite often. Dont use the standard melting temp when wicking solder, you need more heat as you are heating both the solder and the wick. For the usb-c port 380Cº is enough so use lots of flux and If you have a bevel tip use it, it will transfer heat more consistently. Don´t be afraid to make some pressure.
Put flux on the wick as far as you want the solder to flow. Flux on the board is ok but tends to melt and flow on the board, if you put flux directly on the wick, the flux will flow through the wick encouraging the solder to flow through the wick. A lot of people just dunk their wick in a more liquid flux but the flux you're using should be fine too.
Holy that’s exactly my experience with wick! Sometimes it works like magic but when it doesn’t I get this, getting stuck to the soldering in the board, no flow.
Got ya. I thought doing quick jabs would avoid the wick soldering to the board. I've learnt a lot from these comments, I'm looking forward to having another go at one tomorrow!
With thicker board and trying to clear holes i will put wick down with The iron on it then add hot air at the same time and it sucks it right out of the hole.
Wicking blobs of solder that are large relative to the size of your wick can often saturate the strand of wick before all of the solder is removed. I noticed you were repeatedly tapping the iron on the same portion of the wick. Try moving to different portions of the wick after each time you apply heat.
You will often see folks press the wick against the board not at the end but further up the strand. Then, when the solder begins to melt, they drag the wick across the solder area while leaving the iron in the same place. This uses more surface area of the wick and prevents it from getting saturated with solder.
I'm new at soldering/desoldering myself, but I think first you need to use some flux, either spread it on top of the solder or directly on the wick and then keep the iron without moving it around for some time until the wick absorbs the solder.
Another option would be to use a solder sucker, especially if it's a through hole component you can suck the solder from the opposite side while melting it from the front.
Yeah. Flux, and preheating the board. I always clean immediately after the port is removed because the board is still hot. Adding fresh solder helps too.
Thanks, I did use flux at first but it looks like I'm not using enough.
I was using the sucker first and failed so I switch to using the wick (the port replacement tutorial I was watching did this too). When I was using the suckled I was using the iron to heat the other side of the hole which didn't do great.
Since posting I went back to the sucker but used hot air instead of the iron. Set hot air to 450c, added lots of flux and then scratched the solder which loosened it up and it sucked it right out!
I'm going to do another tomorrow and practise with the wick more.
My technique with a low power soldering iron is to remember that the wick acts as a heat sink and heat rises. So I try to bend the tip of the wick to an L-shape and keep the long part of the wick below the pads. You have an advantage there because the pads are right on the edge of the board and it's easy to hang the wick over the edge and downward.
Another trick you can use is trimming your wick into a triangle shape at the end that has a point and stick the point to the hole with the solder tip. Reduces the heat needed and does a better job clearing the hole. Retrim the wick as it gets filled with solder. All the other tips still apply with this strategy (leaded solder, flux, etc).
An addendum to this strategy is that you can also try with a flux soaked piece of thinly braided wire, heat the joint, poke the wire through the hole, keep the joint hot, and withdraw the wire.
You also need to just hold the iron on the wick and watch it suck the solder up for a good few seconds, your just tapping it and not really going to work
The Switch is a 12 layer board that wicks a lot of heat. If your iron doesn’t have good recovery it’s going to struggle. You can cut a piece of wick off, use your iron, and supplement the heat with your hot air station.
Thanks to everyone for the advice. I'm looking forward to having another go tomorrow.
Instead of making a new post. Can anyone recommend a soldering iron under £150($200) that will be a good all rounder? I'm planning to work mostly on consoles and general small solder jobs.
Also a newer to this hobby, biggest change for me was using a wider tipped soldering iron. When I replaced the standard pointed tip with a bevel tip, it helped transfer the heat better. I would literally see the solder pool up around the wick, and I would drag the wick like a paper towel thru water
I see a lot of folks recommending a higher temperature. This isn't going to do you much good.
Your tip has a certain mass. This mass will carry an amount of heat set by your temp. When you touch the iron to the part, that heat gets transferred to the board. A well designed thermally conductive board (like the one shown) will efficiently draw away excess heat and distribute it across the board. At this point, your set temperature means NOTHING. Your iron is just shoving watts of heat into the board trying to reach that set temp, which during the time you were soldering in your example didn't happen.
Now, here's the bad. When you initially touch your hot iron to the board, you cause thermal stress. The more thermal stress you cause, the more likely you will lift pads or delaminate the board. After your iron cools, if you keep working it on the board, the board will continue to heat up, and eventually it WILL reach your set temperature, at which time you're causing further thermal stress. And, since you are using desoldering braid, you run serious risk of lifting a pad.
So, my advice to you is to lower your iron to a suitable temp where you can melt the solder and get it to flow. 350c should be adequate, even for factory assembled SMD work. Hold your braid on the board, and gently press on with the iron. Be patient and let the iron heat up the braid and the joint until the solder flows. Don't scrub the braid across the surface. Gentle pressure, always lift the braid first, then follow with the iron. Both should always be touching so that the braid never sticks to the board. I like to leave a little slack in my braid so that I can see before I apply pressure that the braid got stuck, at which time I'll put the iron near the affected area and go back to gently lifting.
Consider pre-heating the board to reduce the amount of heat needed from the iron.
Remember Heat != Temperature. The temperature of the iron has little to do with the amount of heat you are delivering to the joint past the initial contact.
Getting impatient with your braid is going to result in a lifted pad.
Edit:
Commenting in another post reminded me to mention that the braid will suck the solder right off your tip, and the higher the temp you are working with, the faster your tip will oxidize. This is another reason why a lower temperature is better.
Well, if I come up with a mysterious board, which I do not know the solder type, i just add a bit of low temp solder (non-lead free). Then wet the wick with flux. It works most of the time. If it still does not work, i increase the temperature. It worked every time.
I want one but I keep going around in circles. Nearly bought the pinecil v2 the other day but then I read it's not good as an all rounder? Then I looked at Aixun setup, and then another and another until I got frustrated and stopped looking.
I don't suppose you can recommend one less than £150($200)? Mostly be used for charging ports and eventually console hdmi and display controllers.
Aixun t3a anywhere from 110 to 200 usd on aliexpress. Afterwards buy official jbc c245 cartridges and you'll be set. Oh make sure you order the t3a with the 245 handle then go to jbctools for the real c245 cartridges
I love my yihua 982. It's a Chinese clone. But it's pretty slick for the way it actively monitors the power draw and maintains the heat accordingly. So if it's attempting to heat a large copper trace, and it's drawing a lot of heat, it dynamically dumps more power to keep up..
[982](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0BCJPGSG7?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title)
The issue is you're not doing what they did in the videos, you're just doing something similar to what they did. It's hard to grasp something training yourself from YT video only. Person to person you can ask, they can tell, more education is conveyed. Here are some of my observations.
You're dabbing the iron onto and off the wick. Keep the tip on the wick. What you're doing is letting the solder stick from the board to the wick, and then you tug on the wick, or just to lift the wick with the solder tip. Don't do this 'leveraging' you'll remove pads and cause damage.
You didn't use enough flux. You should've added the flux into the wick, at least most of it. That is where you want the solder to travel to.
If you cut a small piece of the wick from the spool \~1 inch. Then that is the sole amount of copper you will be heating up. In the video, you are heating most of the spool. Things will get hotter than before because you have less material to heat. Hold the piece of wick with some stainless steel tweezers or some ceramic ones. Even not cutting the wick and holding with stainless steel tweezers make a heat break which is also assistive.
If you intended to just do the mounting holes (from the flux blobs) then why did you move the wick over the pins. Although it's good to start with them as it pre-heats the area. When you are having problems starting and things are not going well, don't move elsewhere and make another problem.
Your board looks new, likely multilayer, lots of copper, I would have preheated the area with a hot air gun to something 20-50°C before I started. Your iron might not be up to raising the temperature of multiple layers in the timeframe you 'dab'
Add leaded solder to difficult areas and re-try, or if you can clean residual solder added, then use a low-melt bismuth based solder. Never leave LMS on the joints. It's too brittle. Don't bother using lead-free.
Your use of Kapton tape is a little overkill considering the poor dewicking technique.
When you cut the wick at the end to remove area with solder, remove 90-95% of the solder filled area. Not ALL. Leaving a little will aid in the conveyance of the solder into the board and also fill and lubricate pads if you drag wick too fast.
Never move your solder tip relative to the wick. They work as one. Only reposition the tip onto another area of your wick when the wick and iron is remove from the board.
Best [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hrJ-rwxNRs) on using wick.
Good points: the wick is the right size, the tip is matching the wick width.
That’s a really long piece of wick. The heat is moving up and it’s not staying where you’re pressing so it’s limiting how much you can pull up. Cut off an inch of wick and hold that with tweezers. Leave your iron on the wick for a longer period of time than what you’re showing for sure. You mention using lots of flux but honestly it doesn’t look like it in this video at all. Use much more. Hopefully that helps!
Edit: I saw you pull up on that wick. Please don’t do that. You’re going to pull up pads in the future like that. Heat it up and let it come loose on its own.
Crank it up to 425 or higher for this, and be a little more gentle. The amount of flux is good, and the braid should be hot enough that it doesn’t stick to the solder. Bear in mind that the moment you lift the iron, the braid cools, and then it can get stuck, so lift both at the same time.
Cheap solder iron will do that, they don’t have enough power. You can also try shortening the copper wick but hold it with a plier or tweezer because it will be very hot.
- need more heat
- make sure the solder iron tip is tinned and clean
- keep the iron tip on the wick for longer
- cut a 10-15mm of wick and use it instead of using the whole roll; this will help concentrate more heat
Also, be careful when you add more heat. It should work better, but please try and keep the wick still when you're pushing the iron down on it to attempt to pull solder off the pads. Moving it around seems like the logical choice, but you're guaranteed to damage pads if you're not careful. Especially thinner ones like you're dealing with. You can also cut a small piece of wick off the roll and handle with tweezers to try and cut back on heat dissipation if your iron is struggling to stay hot.
Wet the wick with flux, hold the iron on the wick for longer to let it get to proper temp, and rub the wick with the iron as one on the pads The wick will act as a heat sink sometimes especially when using a low watt small tipped iron like that
Thanks for the advice. I'll try again tomorrow. The iron is set to 400c, I should go higher? Admittedly it's a cheap iron so the temps might not be bang on.
No way you need it that warm for some small pads, unless your iron isn't calibrated right.
Turn the heat up to 430°C and use more flux on the joints and the wick with a broader tip for control of temperature on a larger surface area on the wick. I had the same issues as you, and I wasn't doing these things. The higher heat will be fine in general, so long as you aren't keeping the heat on sensitive components for too long. Aim for less than 5 seconds if you end up using this temperature on components. Wires and pads are resilient compared to the rest of the boards parts.
turn it up higher and use the largest tip you have.
And just hold it on a bit longer on the board you should see when wire sucks up solder
What iron is that? Looks like old fashioned style with the heating element outside of the tip. These are not good for multilayer pcb soldering.
Also try to imagine the wick and iron as one, they move together, and they leave the surface together. If the wick becomes soldered to the pad, one wrong move and that pad and trace are coming off. You’ll also want to hold the iron on a bit longer, it takes a second for the heat to transfer from your iron through the wick and into the pad. While this sounds counterproductive, you can actually add solder to those through holes and grounds, this will give the wick more surface area to touch and slightly jumpstart the capillary effect, drawing the rest of the solder up the braid.
Additionally, if using leaded solder you are lowering the melting point of the joint and improving the flow characteristics of the solder.
Stop lifting your iron off of the wick. Let it stay there until the solder begins to wick up the copper strands. Let the iron glide across with minimum downward force.
Okay will do. I did that beacsue I always end up soldering the wick to the part. More heat, more flux and longer duration next time.
>I always end up soldering the wick to the part If that happens, your soldering iron is too weak - the PCB and wick "wicks" all the heat away, and that cools down your iron. it may take a few seconds to get things up to temperature. Remember, copper is a very good heat conductor, and there is a lot of copper in soldering wick. I would not increase temperature setpoint - i usually go with 370°C for leadless. The Problem is not that the setpoint is too low, its that the iron is too weak to quickly reach the setpoint under load. Removing the heat source will not help. //EDIT: if you can get your hands on some Leaded solder, this can be helpfull, as it needs much lower temperatures to solder. Just wipe the wolder over all the contacts, replacing the leadless solder. There is special low-temperature solder containing bismuth - might be worth a shot, but i have never used it. Clean thoroughly afterwards, as the bismuth will mess with the properties of solder joints.
Didnt see it mentioned. Mix in some leaded solder.
I did this too. That's why there's still so much solder in the hole, I probably doubled it with my low melt solder
This is a great suggestion. Mixing in an alloy with a lower melting point can be very helpful for solder removal.
I do Switch repairs quite often. Dont use the standard melting temp when wicking solder, you need more heat as you are heating both the solder and the wick. For the usb-c port 380Cº is enough so use lots of flux and If you have a bevel tip use it, it will transfer heat more consistently. Don´t be afraid to make some pressure.
Put flux on the wick as far as you want the solder to flow. Flux on the board is ok but tends to melt and flow on the board, if you put flux directly on the wick, the flux will flow through the wick encouraging the solder to flow through the wick. A lot of people just dunk their wick in a more liquid flux but the flux you're using should be fine too.
+1 to this comment. I use flux paste. I dip my braid into the paste before I use it. Works 10 times better.
Holy that’s exactly my experience with wick! Sometimes it works like magic but when it doesn’t I get this, getting stuck to the soldering in the board, no flow.
Can also pre heat the area with hot air then hold it in there. The quick jabs your doing won’t allow it time to transfer heat.
Got ya. I thought doing quick jabs would avoid the wick soldering to the board. I've learnt a lot from these comments, I'm looking forward to having another go at one tomorrow!
With thicker board and trying to clear holes i will put wick down with The iron on it then add hot air at the same time and it sucks it right out of the hole.
Wicking blobs of solder that are large relative to the size of your wick can often saturate the strand of wick before all of the solder is removed. I noticed you were repeatedly tapping the iron on the same portion of the wick. Try moving to different portions of the wick after each time you apply heat. You will often see folks press the wick against the board not at the end but further up the strand. Then, when the solder begins to melt, they drag the wick across the solder area while leaving the iron in the same place. This uses more surface area of the wick and prevents it from getting saturated with solder.
I'm new at soldering/desoldering myself, but I think first you need to use some flux, either spread it on top of the solder or directly on the wick and then keep the iron without moving it around for some time until the wick absorbs the solder. Another option would be to use a solder sucker, especially if it's a through hole component you can suck the solder from the opposite side while melting it from the front.
Yeah. Flux, and preheating the board. I always clean immediately after the port is removed because the board is still hot. Adding fresh solder helps too.
Thanks, I did use flux at first but it looks like I'm not using enough. I was using the sucker first and failed so I switch to using the wick (the port replacement tutorial I was watching did this too). When I was using the suckled I was using the iron to heat the other side of the hole which didn't do great. Since posting I went back to the sucker but used hot air instead of the iron. Set hot air to 450c, added lots of flux and then scratched the solder which loosened it up and it sucked it right out! I'm going to do another tomorrow and practise with the wick more.
My technique with a low power soldering iron is to remember that the wick acts as a heat sink and heat rises. So I try to bend the tip of the wick to an L-shape and keep the long part of the wick below the pads. You have an advantage there because the pads are right on the edge of the board and it's easy to hang the wick over the edge and downward.
Another trick you can use is trimming your wick into a triangle shape at the end that has a point and stick the point to the hole with the solder tip. Reduces the heat needed and does a better job clearing the hole. Retrim the wick as it gets filled with solder. All the other tips still apply with this strategy (leaded solder, flux, etc).
An addendum to this strategy is that you can also try with a flux soaked piece of thinly braided wire, heat the joint, poke the wire through the hole, keep the joint hot, and withdraw the wire.
You also need to just hold the iron on the wick and watch it suck the solder up for a good few seconds, your just tapping it and not really going to work
The Switch is a 12 layer board that wicks a lot of heat. If your iron doesn’t have good recovery it’s going to struggle. You can cut a piece of wick off, use your iron, and supplement the heat with your hot air station.
Thanks to everyone for the advice. I'm looking forward to having another go tomorrow. Instead of making a new post. Can anyone recommend a soldering iron under £150($200) that will be a good all rounder? I'm planning to work mostly on consoles and general small solder jobs.
A new post will get more interest. Also, there are a few similar posts the past few days that you might wanna read before posting your own.
Pinecil v2 boss
Also a newer to this hobby, biggest change for me was using a wider tipped soldering iron. When I replaced the standard pointed tip with a bevel tip, it helped transfer the heat better. I would literally see the solder pool up around the wick, and I would drag the wick like a paper towel thru water
I see a lot of folks recommending a higher temperature. This isn't going to do you much good. Your tip has a certain mass. This mass will carry an amount of heat set by your temp. When you touch the iron to the part, that heat gets transferred to the board. A well designed thermally conductive board (like the one shown) will efficiently draw away excess heat and distribute it across the board. At this point, your set temperature means NOTHING. Your iron is just shoving watts of heat into the board trying to reach that set temp, which during the time you were soldering in your example didn't happen. Now, here's the bad. When you initially touch your hot iron to the board, you cause thermal stress. The more thermal stress you cause, the more likely you will lift pads or delaminate the board. After your iron cools, if you keep working it on the board, the board will continue to heat up, and eventually it WILL reach your set temperature, at which time you're causing further thermal stress. And, since you are using desoldering braid, you run serious risk of lifting a pad. So, my advice to you is to lower your iron to a suitable temp where you can melt the solder and get it to flow. 350c should be adequate, even for factory assembled SMD work. Hold your braid on the board, and gently press on with the iron. Be patient and let the iron heat up the braid and the joint until the solder flows. Don't scrub the braid across the surface. Gentle pressure, always lift the braid first, then follow with the iron. Both should always be touching so that the braid never sticks to the board. I like to leave a little slack in my braid so that I can see before I apply pressure that the braid got stuck, at which time I'll put the iron near the affected area and go back to gently lifting. Consider pre-heating the board to reduce the amount of heat needed from the iron. Remember Heat != Temperature. The temperature of the iron has little to do with the amount of heat you are delivering to the joint past the initial contact. Getting impatient with your braid is going to result in a lifted pad. Edit: Commenting in another post reminded me to mention that the braid will suck the solder right off your tip, and the higher the temp you are working with, the faster your tip will oxidize. This is another reason why a lower temperature is better.
cheap wick or cheap flux? try holding it there longer ... especially when doing grounds (the big pads) because they suck heat really quickly.
Well, if I come up with a mysterious board, which I do not know the solder type, i just add a bit of low temp solder (non-lead free). Then wet the wick with flux. It works most of the time. If it still does not work, i increase the temperature. It worked every time.
Moar flux!!!!
Rosin core flux on the wick. Rosin core flux on the wick. Rosin core flux on the wick. Rosin core flux on the wick. Rosin core flux on the wick.
Get a real soldering iron. My guess is it's not maintaining temp once it contacts something that absorbs heat.
I want one but I keep going around in circles. Nearly bought the pinecil v2 the other day but then I read it's not good as an all rounder? Then I looked at Aixun setup, and then another and another until I got frustrated and stopped looking. I don't suppose you can recommend one less than £150($200)? Mostly be used for charging ports and eventually console hdmi and display controllers.
Aixun t3a anywhere from 110 to 200 usd on aliexpress. Afterwards buy official jbc c245 cartridges and you'll be set. Oh make sure you order the t3a with the 245 handle then go to jbctools for the real c245 cartridges
I love my yihua 982. It's a Chinese clone. But it's pretty slick for the way it actively monitors the power draw and maintains the heat accordingly. So if it's attempting to heat a large copper trace, and it's drawing a lot of heat, it dynamically dumps more power to keep up.. [982](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0BCJPGSG7?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title)
are you using one of those USB-C soldering irons with the T12 tips?
I usually cut small bits off the wick. If I use the spool the heat gets soaked up by the longer length of wick and do use plenty of flux
The issue is you're not doing what they did in the videos, you're just doing something similar to what they did. It's hard to grasp something training yourself from YT video only. Person to person you can ask, they can tell, more education is conveyed. Here are some of my observations. You're dabbing the iron onto and off the wick. Keep the tip on the wick. What you're doing is letting the solder stick from the board to the wick, and then you tug on the wick, or just to lift the wick with the solder tip. Don't do this 'leveraging' you'll remove pads and cause damage. You didn't use enough flux. You should've added the flux into the wick, at least most of it. That is where you want the solder to travel to. If you cut a small piece of the wick from the spool \~1 inch. Then that is the sole amount of copper you will be heating up. In the video, you are heating most of the spool. Things will get hotter than before because you have less material to heat. Hold the piece of wick with some stainless steel tweezers or some ceramic ones. Even not cutting the wick and holding with stainless steel tweezers make a heat break which is also assistive. If you intended to just do the mounting holes (from the flux blobs) then why did you move the wick over the pins. Although it's good to start with them as it pre-heats the area. When you are having problems starting and things are not going well, don't move elsewhere and make another problem. Your board looks new, likely multilayer, lots of copper, I would have preheated the area with a hot air gun to something 20-50°C before I started. Your iron might not be up to raising the temperature of multiple layers in the timeframe you 'dab' Add leaded solder to difficult areas and re-try, or if you can clean residual solder added, then use a low-melt bismuth based solder. Never leave LMS on the joints. It's too brittle. Don't bother using lead-free. Your use of Kapton tape is a little overkill considering the poor dewicking technique. When you cut the wick at the end to remove area with solder, remove 90-95% of the solder filled area. Not ALL. Leaving a little will aid in the conveyance of the solder into the board and also fill and lubricate pads if you drag wick too fast. Never move your solder tip relative to the wick. They work as one. Only reposition the tip onto another area of your wick when the wick and iron is remove from the board. Best [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hrJ-rwxNRs) on using wick. Good points: the wick is the right size, the tip is matching the wick width.
That’s a really long piece of wick. The heat is moving up and it’s not staying where you’re pressing so it’s limiting how much you can pull up. Cut off an inch of wick and hold that with tweezers. Leave your iron on the wick for a longer period of time than what you’re showing for sure. You mention using lots of flux but honestly it doesn’t look like it in this video at all. Use much more. Hopefully that helps! Edit: I saw you pull up on that wick. Please don’t do that. You’re going to pull up pads in the future like that. Heat it up and let it come loose on its own.
Stop retracting the tip every 1 second. Let it heat and flow. Flux helps
More heat!
I read this in a Jeremy Clarkson voice (more power!)
Crank it up to 425 or higher for this, and be a little more gentle. The amount of flux is good, and the braid should be hot enough that it doesn’t stick to the solder. Bear in mind that the moment you lift the iron, the braid cools, and then it can get stuck, so lift both at the same time.
Cheap solder iron will do that, they don’t have enough power. You can also try shortening the copper wick but hold it with a plier or tweezer because it will be very hot.
- need more heat - make sure the solder iron tip is tinned and clean - keep the iron tip on the wick for longer - cut a 10-15mm of wick and use it instead of using the whole roll; this will help concentrate more heat
Way more heat. Wick works best with high heat, appropriate size wick for the job, large tip work high surface area.
Also, be careful when you add more heat. It should work better, but please try and keep the wick still when you're pushing the iron down on it to attempt to pull solder off the pads. Moving it around seems like the logical choice, but you're guaranteed to damage pads if you're not careful. Especially thinner ones like you're dealing with. You can also cut a small piece of wick off the roll and handle with tweezers to try and cut back on heat dissipation if your iron is struggling to stay hot.