by

|   Oct 12, 2008 at  7:18pm

Be careful soldering in the stand offs! Don't let too much solder run down into the holes.

I soldered in the 2mm sockets normally, and some of the solder ran through and into the holes that accept the xbee's pins. I could not get the solder out with wick, so the socket (and the board when i tried to desolder it) was ruined.

picture here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/marc.bayerkohler/Misc#5256440319164643730

you can see where some of the solder went through and filled the copper receptacles, so the xbee would not plug in.

by

|   Apr 10, 2009 at  1:13am

I definitely second what bearsinthesea said, the same thing happened to me. BE CAREFUL SOLDERING THESE! If you feed enough solder in to get the nice conical shape you normally have on a good connection, you will have most certainly used WAY to much and filled the sockets with solder.

If it happens to you, you can yank hard enough on the plastic shell and it will separate from the pins. You can then easily desolder each pin. Your board will be fine, but the connector will obviously be ruined.

Be careful! These are poorly designed!

by

|   Jun  8, 2009 at  5:38am

A word of encouragement for potential solderers!

I soldered these successfully with no trouble at all. I only learned to solder a few days earlier by watching a short tutorial on youtube so I'm not at all expert.

I would almost certainly have got it wrong if I had not read the advice here so it's great that bearsinthesea and BobSomers shared their experiences.

I just wanted to point out that with care there is no problem at all soldering these sockets.

by

|   Feb 22, 2010 at  3:54pm

> Be careful! These are poorly designed!

These sockets seem to be identical to the Digi-recommended Samtek sockets that cost 4 times as much at D***Key. So only $1 per socket is a bargain compared to $4 each.

Too much solder is always a problem with stamped-pin sockets. They need a solder barrier or use sockets with machined pins.