Hi my usb connector became loose and now my board will only make connection when I bend the cable slightly up.
I tried to reinforce the solder joints on the bottom side, but this didn't really help.
I dont know if you can see it but the connector of the lower board is slightly bent up. Weirdly enough I need to bend it up even more to have it still make connection.
Can this be fixed somehow?
Argh sad to hear. The first Axoloti I bought also has some complications with the usb connection. It is a bit "wiggely". And I am affraid that something similar to your accident wil happen in near future.
Where is the mechanical failure point? The 4 solder "stubs" that go in a hole? Those are (mostly) serving mechanical attachment. Resoldering these, it's a bit complicated. In manufacturing, these are (reflow) soldered on the top side like surface mount components. And later, they're soldered a seconds time from the bottom side using wave soldering. Unfortunately this appears to trap a bubble of air in the hole so the second soldering does probably not reinforce the top side solder.
If you attempt to solder the 4 stubs from the bottom, I think you should first try to wick away the bottom solder to open the cover to the trapped air bubble (using desoldering braid). And then apply solder from the bottom side again. I would warn against adding solder to the front 2 stubs from the top side, excess solder will creep into the connector making it impossible to insert a plug.
On your picture, it looks like the usb socket is bent, it is board on the bottom that is failing, right?
Essentially even if the 4 stubs are loose, this would not affect the connection, as they do not carry a signal. So it could be the signal connection inside the socket that is failing, or the (5) surface-mount solder joints at the rear side of the socket that connects the usb signals from the connector to the circuit board.
If the socket is deformed, it needs to be replaced. Replacing this (Hirose ZX62D-B-5P8) can only be done using hot-air soldering tools, perhaps find someone locally that has hot-air soldering tools and knows how to use them. Replacing the socket with a classical soldering iron is impossible.
One alternative (since board revision 1.1) there are solder pads reachable on the bottom side that contain the usb device signals, you could connect a female "B" type usb socket, or connect a male "A" cable. The following picture shows the signals on a top side view (but you can only reach them on the bottom side).
Ouch ok the connector is broke then. I hate these micro usb connectors, they are so incredibly fragile and annoy me like everyday with my external hard drives, loosing connection all the time.
I also had it a couple of times with my axolotis that you touch the cable and loose connection.
But that option you describe using the pins sounds. interesting.
Since I'm using 2 Axoloti boards, I could solder a usb cable there that goes to a usb hub.
Or would you recomend soldering these pin headers in there? It doesnt seem there is enoguh space on the other side.
If you solder wires to those pads, make sure that the wires are immobilized afterwards, use some hot glue to fix the wires to the board. A usb cable permanently attached to a circuit board is delicate, unless mounted in an enclosure and the cable fed through a cable gland.
Pinheaders will add quite some height, it's nice to be able to detach all wires from a circuit board
Soldering pin headers, you can not reach these holes on the other side for soldering, but I think it is still possible with straight pinheaders, and less of a problem with angled pinheaders.
Ok thx again for the suggestions.
My plan is to have 2+ Boards + USB hub in an enclosure, so having some wired conenction from the boards to the hub will save me quite some space I think. in terms of modularity I like pinheaders at the moment. And then something like this on the side of the hub:
That is the most bizarre USB connector I've ever seen 
It lacks any sort of mechanical mounting except for the pins itself, that would take the stress of a cable.
How about ripping the enclosure of an off-the-shelf usb hub, mount the usb hub circuit board in your enclosure so that you can access the upstream USB connector on the usb hub pcb without pigtail, and perhaps replace some downstream connectors with wires (2.54mm pinheaders won't fit on the same place as a USB-A-F connector)?
