Soldering the headers
Both kinds of strip are in the bag, so the choice costs nothing. It is worth thinking about for a minute anyway, because it decides whether pushing a cable in levers on six solder joints or pushes into the breadboard.
Break six pins off
The strips are breakaway. Count six, grip either side of the gap with pliers, and bend — they snap cleanly between pins. There is more than twice the header you need, so a strip that breaks in the wrong place is not a problem.
Straight or right-angle
Both are in the bag, two strips of each, and the difference is not cosmetic.
A USB-C plug takes a real push to seat. With straight pins the board stands upright in the breadboard and that push becomes a lever on six small joints, every time. With right-angle pins the board lies flat with the socket pointing off the edge of the breadboard, and the same push goes along the board and into the breadboard's own grip on the pins.
For a breadboard, use the right-angle strips. For a board that plugs into a socket on a finished project, straight pins are the right answer and the levering problem does not arise.
Solder one pin first
Put the strip through, solder one end pin, then look at it from the side before doing any others. If it is leaning, reheat that one joint and push the plastic flat. Once it sits square, do the remaining five.
That order costs nothing and saves the job where a strip is soldered at both ends at a slight angle and will not go into a breadboard without a fight.
Do not reflow the socket
The USB-C socket is already soldered, and its shell tabs are soldered into plated slots that hold the whole connector against the push of a plug. Nothing you are doing needs heat anywhere near it. Keep the iron on the header row, work from the pad side, and leave the connector alone.
If the board is going to be handled a lot, put a screw through one of the mounting holes as well. They are plated all the way through, which makes them considerably more robust than a plain drilled hole.
When it does not work
Solder one pin only, then reheat that single joint while pressing the strip flat with a finger on the plastic. Once it sits right, do the other five. Trying to straighten a strip that is already soldered at both ends means fighting two joints at once and usually lifting one.
A lifted pad does not go back. On this board there is usually a way out, because every net reaches more than one place — you can run a fine wire from the component lead to the socket's own pad. Better not to get there: use braid rather than levering the strip, and do not hold the iron on a pad for more than a couple of seconds at a time.
ENIG takes solder easily, so a pad that refuses is nearly always too cold rather than contaminated. A 0.1 inch through-hole joint on a board with no ground plane wants a tip around 330 °C and about a second and a half. Add a little fresh leaded or rosin-core solder to the joint even if you are reflowing an existing one — it is the flux that makes it wet, and the flux in old solder is spent.
Whichever you like; both faces are labelled. The usual choice is pins on the same side as the socket so the board lies flat with the socket facing out. Fit them on the other face and the board lies component side down, which is fine if it is going into a socket rather than a breadboard.
Why the indicator is so faint, and the thing it tells you that is not the thing people read into it.
The power LED, and what it proves →Edit this page — content/books/usb-c-breakout/soldering-the-headers.mdx
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