replacing a capacitor

Quote from greenmeansgoooo : i fixed the dvd player. my soldering job was messy and only half way held the cap on the board so i just left short little legs and bent them down for extra conductivity. the desoldering was much easier then i was expecting. i think the piece of solder i had was some old lead solder or something.

Bending the legs down doesn't improve electrical conductivity but does give the joint extra mechanical strength and is done for circuit boards subjected to high vibration. But bending the leads makes it much harder to replace the component later on. The safest ways to remove such components are to either cut their leads from the top so each lead can be easily manipulated individually, or use copper desoldering braid, like Soldawick, to absorb every trace of solder possible to make the solder joint mechanically weak enough so the lead can be wiggled sideways to crack any remaining solder. A lot of times the desoldering braid won't wick up every bit of solder, in which case you have to cut off the used braid (always cut it off immediately after each use) and heat the joint again, or start all over by applying more solder, and the latter usually works better. Another thing that helps pick up solder is first applying rosin flux (paste or liquid). Lead-free solder ("RoHS" label somewhere) requires higher temperatures to melt, so it's best to apply regular 60% tin, 40% lead solder (or even better, 63% tin, 37% lead) at the start, no matter what method you employ. A clean tip conducts heat a LOT better than a dirty one, so the tip should be wiped off frequently with a damp cloth or brass curly hair.

The biggest problem with soldering or desoldering is insufficient heat, and heat isn't the same as temperature. Easily removing non-surface-mount parts held by lead-free solder requires at least 35-40 watts with a single-sided circuit board, 45-50W with a 2-sided board, and maybe 55-60W for multilayer boards. With leaded solder, you can probably get by with 5-10W less heat for each of those types of boards. Also irons bigger than about 40W will overheat the iron tip unless the iron is temperature controlled or its tip is big (maybe too big for circuit boards).