[sdiy] pin headers on the wrong side of a PCB

[Vladimir Pantelic]

> housing, but I have a couple of ideas.  Extensive pre-tinning of the pads
> should do the trick, but it will be interesting to see how it works with
> headers of more than 3 pins or so.  I'll probably have to pre-tin just a
> couple of pads, and then hope that the solder flows well on the remaining
> pins.  I may drill a hole in the middle of each pad and feed small-gauge
> solder through the hole from the non-solder side while heating the pin.
> It's all an experiment.

what I do in such cases is to make the pads longer than the recommended 
footprint since that assumes reflow soldering with paste and wont leave much of 
the pad sticking out under the part. if you make the pad longer you have an 
exposed area on the pad that the soldering iron can touch and heat up at the 
same time as the tip of the component leg. then adding solder will wick it into 
the right place easily.

so I would only pre-tin one pad in order to secure and align the connector, but 
would try to have no air-gap on the other pads