Reliable Through Hole Connections

[pathare]

My experiment with hatched planes yesterday had a secondary goal in mind, I've always had problems with connectors and V1 boards. The problem is unreliability in the connection do to the forces generated in using the connectors. I always had to make sure I still had the voltage at the ICs on the board because I could never be sure that the connector solder joints were holding. Even with hot gluing the connector to the board.

Maybe my annular rings are too small but I decided that even if I don't "need" a hatched plane I will still use one for each pin of a connector. I use the plane as an additional annular ring where space allows and just walk the solder holding the connector out as far as I can.

The board I created yesterday with the hatched planes took longer than all the boards Ive ever created to make but, for the first time I didn't feel like I was fighting with the board itself to run my tests.

[mewertow]

Hey @pathare,

That's really clever - would you mind positing a picture of the connector with hatch plane 'anchoring'? If this works well, we could update the design recommendations to include your approach!

• Matt

[pathare]

finally I realized to just crop the image and it uploaded easy enough.

[jazozaya]

Really cool approach! Did you feel much more comfortable with the joint strength with this method?

for the first time I didn't feel like I was fighting with the board itself to run my tests.

[pathare]

I'm confused if you answered your own question with my original post lol. The answer though is yes, with the new solder and hatched planes I don't feel like I'm ripping the solder off the pads when I plug in connectors anymore.