Repair Broken HDMI Cable Without Soldering Skills

HDMI repair is a very difficult process which requires some soldering skills and petition.

In this Instructable I will try to make this process much easier.

• Spring clamp - I use 160 mm
• Coping saw or gas torch
• Plywood
• Heat-shrink tube
• Soldering iron - 20W should do the job.
• Isopropyl Alcohol
• Office paper - or any low density paper "lower is better".
• Bamboo Stick
• Hot glue 
• Pencil
• Tweezers
• HDMI adapter F-F
• Double sided foam tape
• Solder Flux
• Masking tape
• Wire clippers
• Zip ties - 3x 150mm
• Phillips Screwdriver “2.0mm”
• Digital multimeter with continuity test function

Most HDMI cables have a braided shielding layer and soft PVC jacket, this allows easily remove insulation with a utility knife, without damaging data wires.

Not all cables have braided shields, some can use only aluminium foil, this means you should be more careful while removing insulation. Most difficult is cables which uses a nylon braided jacket.

After the main jacket was removed we can review breaded or aluminium shielding. Be cheerful, don't remove copper ground wire, which is located under shielding.

Each data pair has their oven aluminium shielding and protective plastic sleeve, also each pair can have their own ground wire. All of this highly depends from manufacturer and cable model.

To remove insulation from the data wires I use soldering iron.

There is no standardized color schematic for HDMI cable wiring, this means we should trace each wire one by one. For this you will need a digital multimeter with continuity test function. If your multimeter does not have a continuity test you can measure resistance.

Connector has small holes, which are designed to hold pins in place, we can use these holes to trace wires. 

Be careful, these holes very fragile! 

I made a picking needle from a very thin piece of copper wire. You can use leftover wire from the damaged connector.

Define wires by color and color group, for example:

• TMDS wires or data wires have additional colored aluminium shedding, there 4 pair of them (they also may have additional ground wire) use shielding color as a group name then data "+" and "-" color. Example (Pw-8;Pg-9) Where "P" define pink "w" defines white "g" defines green.
• Individual wires yo can define only by color. Example: R-7, where "R" is Red.

In general, you can mark them as you wish, all of this depend what easy for you to understand. I eave ,my schematic and blank connector schematic as reference.

To make a wire holder we need a piece of plywood. 

Exact dimensions of my holder is: W:50mm; H:3mm; D:25mm

First we should define the pins distance on the connector. Because pins are quite small and tolerance is very low I use a pencil and low density paper to make a stencil. This makes the process much easier.

After this we can transfer our stencil on the plywood.

To cut grooves I use a coping saw, this actually takes a lot of time, the only one advantage using it is cleaner result. But you can use gas or electric soldering iron to do that.

There is no exact groove depth, you should always check it, wire should tightly fit in the groove.

After the wire holder is done, we can fix wires in the grooves. No matter what you use to cut grooves, soldering iron or coping saw, there is a big chance that wires will be slightly loose. The best way which I found to fix wires in place is hot glue.

• Place each wire according to schematic you created in the step “2”

Because it's difficult to glue each wire separately, try to glue them in pairs!

• Put glue near to the bottom of the holder.
• Fix wires near to the connector by bamboo stick.
• Fix wire holder on the surface using double sided foam tape.
• Insert connector in the F-F adapter and clamp it.
• Precisely align the connection with wires. 
• Fix clamp with masking tape.
• Align each wire if needed.

When alignment is done we can start soldering.

• Add a lot of soldering flux
• Set the temperature on your soldering Iron about 350°C.
• Add a little bit of solder on the soldering iron tip.
• Put solder on the soldering points and wire.
• In case you made a short circuit sample, add more soldering paste and remove excessive solder  with a clean soldering tip.
• If you add a lot of solder on the soldering point you can use a desoldering wick.
• Clean soldering flux with Isopropyl alcohol.

Wire insulation and connector body is easy to melt, be careful and do not overheat them, always add soldering flux!

There is almost no space inside the case at first glance. Actually we can freely fit all excessive cable with no problems.

• Remove hot glue. Heat glue and pry wires with tweezers.
• Cut about 20mm of heat shrink tube, we will use it to protect soldering joints.
• Cut about 40mm of heat shrink tube, we will use it for cable management inside the case.
• Put connector inside the case it should go tightly with a small bit of force, it should stay in place without any support.
• Put screws from one side, but don't fully tighten the them.
• Put screws from the other side and after this you can tighten all screw from botch sides.