A bit of soldering help

Hand tools, soldering irons, scopes, multimeters. Talk about em HERE!

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
jackcust
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:29 pm

A bit of soldering help

Post by jackcust »

I need to connect the socket of a keypad to a prototyping shield. I was planning to simply solder a male header to the shield, then connect those points to the correct inputs. But I can't fit hookup wire into the same holes the header goes through.

I haven't been working with PCBs for very long and I imagine there is an easy solution. Perhaps I can form a joint between the hookup wire and the header without the wire passing through the hole? But I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

I should mention - this Arduino+shield is going into a small enclosure, so I can't attach a breadboard or anything. The connections have to be made directly to the shield. And I can't take advantage of that series of 3 connected wells, because the keypad socket has to come in from a certain direction.

User avatar
adafruit_support_rick
 
Posts: 35092
Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:42 am

Re: A bit of soldering help

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

jackcust wrote:But I can't fit hookup wire into the same holes the header goes through.
A picture might help. But what sort of hookup wire are you using that it won't fit into a header hole? Sounds like your wire is much too heavy. Most people use 22AWG wire.

jackcust
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:29 pm

Re: A bit of soldering help

Post by jackcust »

driverblock wrote:A picture might help. But what sort of hookup wire are you using that it won't fit into a header hole? Sounds like your wire is much too heavy. Most people use 22AWG wire.
Thanks - I have that wire, and it fits through the holes in the shield - but not through a hole that I am also sticking a male header pin through. (I suspect I'm going about this unusually.)

User avatar
adafruit_support_bill
 
Posts: 88093
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:11 am

Re: A bit of soldering help

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

A typical prototyping technique is to pass it through an adjacent hole, then bend it over to bridge with the header pin. Solder in both places for a secure joint.

jackcust
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:29 pm

Re: A bit of soldering help

Post by jackcust »

adafruit_support wrote:A typical prototyping technique is to pass it through an adjacent hole, then bend it over to bridge with the header pin. Solder in both places for a secure joint.
Sorry to be annoying, but I'm not exactly sure what you mean...

User avatar
adafruit_support_rick
 
Posts: 35092
Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:42 am

Re: A bit of soldering help

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Thusly:
header pin.jpg
header pin.jpg (10.55 KiB) Viewed 1810 times

jackcust
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:29 pm

Re: A bit of soldering help

Post by jackcust »

Thank you! It seems to have worked well.

User avatar
adafruit_support_rick
 
Posts: 35092
Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:42 am

Re: A bit of soldering help

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Cool :D
Thanks for the opportunity to display my awesome artistic chops! :lol:

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “Tools Tools Tools”