This tutorial will show you how to Stack a set of 4562 FETs onto your Mini-Z Board. The process is fairly in-depth and requires advanced soldering skills and a lot of patience. This is a tedious process and if you don't take your time you could damage FETs or fry your board. This process is the same for all Mini-Zs and most any car that uses 4562 FETs in the "H-Bridge" configuration.

• Solder
• Soldering Iron
• Solder Wick
• Flat Nose Pliers
• Hobby Knife
• Mini Meter Pro
• Hemostats
• Plastic Clamp
• FETS (8962 or 4562)
• Anti-Static Wrist Strap and Matt

A Soldering Iron with a narrow, curved tip works best for this kind of work. It allows you to get into the tight space behind the black diode close to the input side of the board (you'll see which one).

This is a Weller LT1LX tip and is our preferred tip for FET soldering.

If you get static zaps around your house often (as we do in our shop) it is very important to have an anti-static wrist strap and matt. This helps prevent static build-up in your solder joints that may damage your FETs and/ or board.

We are serious about this, before we started using anti static straps, we would loose 1 in 3 boards to static.

Here is a little trick that will help a lot. Take the roach out of your Straight Hemostats and put a rubber band on them as shown. This will come in handy later.

Alright, this is your fresh Mini-Z board. Clip this down with the helping hands to keep it steady because you will need both hands for this process.

Take the solder wick and heat it up around the prongs, this will absorb the factory solder so you can remove the fets.

After removing the factory solder heat the prongs up again, with an X-acto knife lightly pry the FET off the board (be careful, you don't want to lift the pads on the board!). It is a lot easier to remove the left one first.

Do the same now with the right side FET.

This is what the board should look like when you are done removing the FETs. Set the board aside.

You are now going to take the FETs and get them ready. The first thing to do is to straighten out the prongs in all but 2 of your FETs (these two will be the ones that base your FET stack).

Notice the difference? The FET on the left is normal, the FET on the right, the prongs on the have been straightened out.

We are doing a 2x3 stack (2 stacks of 3 FETs each) therefore we are straightening the prongs on 4 FETs (in the back) and leaving 2 untouched.

With your rubber band assisted hemostats, you are going to stack the FETs with the straight prong FET on the top as shown.

Using your flat nose pliers, gently squeeze the prongs flat against the sides of the bottom FET as shown.

If you are going to stack higher than a 2x2 you need to repeat this process for each level.

This is required for the solder to bridge the legs together properly.

Now, situate your hemostat on the helping hands, this makes it much easier to solder and place all 3 FETs together taking care to align them.

Important! Make sure all the FETs are facing the same direction when stacking them.

First solder the input side (this would be the side, that if you were reading the writing on the FET, it would be right side up). Make sure these are all independent and that solder does not bridge across any of the prongs.

You see here, nice and clean joints. Again note the orientation of the writing on the FET.

Now the output side (this side faces the motor leads), you can actually just blob the solder on this side. By bridging the prongs with solder, you actually give better structural integrity to the stack, not to mention it is a whole lot easier.

You will now solder the FETs on to our bare-board.

Important! The board is marked with a "1" at pin location 1. The dot on top of the FET points towards this pin.

Use the Plastic clamp to line up your FETs on to the appropriate pads on the board. It is advisable to do the right side FET stack first.

Make sure the output side goes toward the motor output wires.

Solder the input side first. Again, make sure you do not bridge any of the prongs or pads on the board. (Notice how the curved tip helps us work in this tight area)

Do the Left side FET stack now.

Again, solder the input side first.

This is how it should look. All the prongs are lined up well and no bridging exists in between any one of them. If you bridge t hem, the FETs would go POOF when you applied power!

Another view.

Once you make sure the input side is done correctly, you go for the output side. This is easy, just melt the solder with you iron from top to bottom and it should slide down and attach this end to the pads.

This is what your output side should look like from up close.

You will now test the FETs for continuity. This will enable us to make sure we have no shorts before we actually run power through the board.

Test the prongs from top to bottom to be sure they are completely soldered.

You should have continuity top to bottom but none prong to prong on the input side. (If you do, you must figure out which ones are shorting and why).

The output side should be easy to test. Just make sure you are getting continuity from each upper leg to the blob at the bottom.

Lastly, make sure you do not get any continuity between the motor output pads. This would be major meltdown!

Once you have made sure your board has continuity in all the right places, and is without shorts, you can test it with a power source, motor, and radio. If all is done correctly, it should fire right up!

Congratulations! Here's your FET Stacked board ready to go in you Z'. Now get yourself a mod motor and go smoke some folks!

We test our Stacked FET Boards once while it is still stock before we do any work to it, and again after we put the Stacked FETS on it. By testing we mean the EP is tested for steering accuracy, for how much load it can handle, and for range. I suggest you do the same prior to putting the EP back into your car as it will only add to the frustration if you put it into your car and then test it only to find out there was some complication. Remember, if you don’t think you can do this yourself we will be more than happy to do it for you. You can either buy a pre-built Stacked FET Board from us or send us your board to us and have us Stack the FETs on it for you.