Mastering through-hole soldering is difficult for those people playing at home with our irons, spindles, flux, and, in some cases, braids. It’s nearly encouraging, then, to find out that through-hole soldering was likewise a discomfort for a company that has actually made more than 60 million items with it.

Raspberry Pi boards have a mix of surface-mount gadgets (SMDs) and through-hole bits. SMDs enable much more small chips, resistors, and other bits to be connected to boards by their small pins, flat contacts, solder balls, or other connections. For those things that are larger, or based on rough forces like awkward human hands, through-hole soldering is still needed, with leads poked through a connective hole and solder used to link and join them firmly.

The Raspberry Pi board has a 40-pin GPIO header on it that requires through-hole soldering, in addition to bits like the Ethernet and USB ports. These need robust solder joints, which can’t be done the very same method similar to SMT (surface-mount innovation) tools. “In the early days of Raspberry Pi, these parts were inserted by hand, and later by robotic placement,” composes Roger Thornton, director of applications for Raspberry Pi, in a post. The boards then needed to go through a follow-up wave soldering action.

Now Pi boards have their little bits and larger pieces soldered at the exact same time through an invasive reflow soldering procedure carried out with Raspberry Pi’s UK making partner, Sony. After changing part positioning, the solder stencil, and the adapters, the board makers might then put and protect all their elements in the very same phase.