How to Fix Analog Stick Drift - 3 Ways

this video is sponsored by jlcpcb in this video i'm going to show you three ways to fix analog stick drift the clips in this video were taken from other videos that i've done in the past but i wanted to make one video dedicated to all the ways that you can fix analog stick drift so let's just get right into it the first way and the most common way that i've done it in the past is just replace the entire analog stick but the problem with that is it does require a hot air station and soldering skills so another way that you can fix some of these issues is to just clean the potentiometers from the inside now this method doesn't always work but if they've gotten wet or there's some sort of liquid damage in there then sometimes that can work the third way and my current favorite way is to replace just the potentiometer now this doesn't always work in every situation but if the analog stick is just drifting on one of the planes then you usually can just replace that one potentiometer so without all being said let's get to the repairs now i'm going to heat all these solder joints up at once with my hot air station to let this old analog stick drop out the bottom there's several ways you can install the new stick one of them is to just keep all the solder joints liquid and then push up the new analog stick through the holes one of the difficult things about that is that all of this solder has to be liquid all at the same time and all of these little pins have to line up with the holes in the motherboard now if you watch my ps4 controller repair video you watch me just push this up through the holes and that can work fine if you if you get some practice and get good at it i'm going to show you another way to do it where i keep the solder melted one hole at a time and use a solder sucker to clear out the hole and then i will push up this analog stick through the holes and then manually solder each joint i am using heat resistant gloves this is not necessary but it does make it easier when i need to pull this stick out or if i was going to push this new stick up through the holes while the heat was still applied these just help keep my hands protected a little bit from the heat [Music] and here is the old analog stick here is the new analog stick and now all the solder is cleared out of all the holes and i can push this new analog stick up through the holes i do want to make sure that it is aligned nice and flat on the board which this one is so now i can solder all the joints on the bottom of the board [Music] and there we go how's the look all of these little joints are all soldered on correctly nice and shiny i did fix this joint i don't see any other problems here so i think now it's time to get it back in the controller and give it a test okay and each time i press them these light up and they also don't drift replacing the entire analog stick is the most difficult way to fix analog stick problems but it is sometimes the only option as much fun 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you again to jlc pcb for sponsoring this video and if you are looking for custom printed circuit boards go to jlcpcb.com now i'm going to try the cleaning method if you watch this part when i move the analog stick you'll see that it moves just like that that's because inside this piece there is what's called a potentiometer and that little potentiometer inside there can get dirty and gunked up and sometimes just worn out so what i'm going to do is remove a clip over here and remove a clip over here and slide this potentiometer piece out so we can get a look in there clean it all up and then do the same on this side right here now with that piece pried off i can remove this piece just like that so this shows the inside piece of the potentiometer there's a little indents right here that contact the inside rings on this part of the analog stick down here so i need to clean all those up and i need to clean these rings up on this part and this part then we'll put it back together and see if that actually fixes it a lot of people want to know how to fix these without soldering new ones on and this is one way that sometimes will work so let's see if it works in this case now i'm going to use a cleaning swab that doesn't have any pieces like a cotton one would just to make sure that none of the pieces get stuck inside this ring now with this cleaned off and the rings inside the analog stick cleaned off i can put this one back together and then clean this side and now that one is clipped back on now we can do the same for the other side okay now both of those potentiometers have been cleaned let's get it hooked up to my computer and see if that fixed it and unfortunately it did not fix this issue so sometimes that's a method that can work but unfortunately in this case it did not so i'll be replacing that joystick along with this other joystick as well as they both show that they are faulty i did want to show you why sometimes cleaning these analog sticks just doesn't work if you look closely you can see right here these marks on this black track that's where these little pieces of metal ride and that's how the analog stick registers which way you want your character to go you'll also notice these marks right here and right here that corresponds with this metal piece and that metal piece so looking at these marks on the black tracks you can just see how the black part is just worn down there's pretty deep grooves on here and right on here and that's right where these metal pieces ride so unfortunately there's just not enough good contact there for the analog stick to register which way you want your character to go so unfortunately cleaning did not work for me in this repair but as i said sometimes it can work especially if there's a little bit of liquid inside the analog stick potentiometers then just cleaning out that liquid can sometimes get those working now for the third and final method replacing just the potentiometer this is my current favorite as it is a lot easier than replacing the entire analog stick but do note that you will need some soldering skills to do this so i did just mark right here to make sure i didn't get confused which one i needed to replace so i'm going to flip this over and remove the solder on the three joints that hold it on then slip a new one in and solder it down so the first method i'm going to try is a solder sucker you can either use a solder sucker or you can use solder wick to remove the solder off of the joints now i'm going to release this potentiometer and then finish getting all the solder out of the joints now we have most of the solder out of the joints i'm going to wiggle this around and should be able to get it pulled out and there we go so that is the faulty potentiometer now i'm going to put a new one in get it soldered in and then we'll test it and see if that fixes it okay and the new potentiometer has been fitted so now all i have to do is solder it back on and then we can test it the left one has zero drift so that method definitely works so it's just another way if you're having a problem especially if you're having a problem only one axis that means you can just go in and replace that one specific potentiometer and you don't have to do the entire analog stick so those are the three ways to fix analog stick problems thank you so much for watching and i hope you have a good one

Channel: TronicsFix

Views: 300,904

Rating: 4.8839808 out of 5

Keywords: tronicsfix, tronicsfix analog stick drift, tronicsfix controller repair, analog stick drift, how to fix, ps4 repair, xbox one repair

Id: EmtyRAIwxJw

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020