Hi David Niklas,
As for my status, (since you did ask why the ML was silent), I'm hand soldering an eDP connector. It is going poorly as the pins are so small that I had to buy a set of 20x mag glasses.
Have you tried drag soldering? You would coat the pins and pads in thick flux paste and drag a small ball of solder with a large chisel tip iron across the pins. Any unwanted bridges can be destroyed by heating them shortly.
-- Ricardo