LPCXpresso Surgery

I have an LPCXpresso now. The board breaks out a 120MHz LPC1769 to DIP form. Attached to the board is an LPC-Link, a JTAG debugger. To use both boards conveniently, they need to be separated. One of my readers, Nemo, suggests an Xacto hobby saw and mitre box to split the boards apart. He achieved very nice, precision cuts this way.

My approach for cutting apart the LPCXpresso and LPC-Link involved use of a plastic cutter and utility knife shown above.

• Use solder braid to remove the solder from the solder jumpers between both board halves.
• Then score a line with plastic cutter on both sides using straight edge and (gently) vise. 
• Score until you can't easily go deeper. 
• Continue scoring with the narrower utility knife to score a bit deeper
• Snap the board in half by hand without much effort. 
• Sand both edges.

Now mount male header pins on one side, female header socket on the other, et voila. Plus, no cables to deal with.