This eurorack power thing, not sure if its just the ones I bought but the damn plastic of the body seems to melt before my solder flows… the amount of pins if pushed slightly through the body while soldering…
I knew there was a reason they make nylon washers.
With a sufficiently hot soldering iron (I use 360 degrees Centigrade), a relatively large tip (for thermal inertia of the hot tip) that makes a good thermal contact and quick soldering that should not be happening.
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If the plastic melts, it’s a sign that the heat is not transferred quickly enough.
There are a few things which you can do to improve the situation:
Make sure to use solder flux, a soldering iron with a sufficiently large thermal mass (meaning that the tip should have a “large-ish” metal block/cylinder to hold the heat) and you can also avoid soldering neighbouring pins: skip one or two to avoid too much heat at one spot and prevent melting the plastic.
I’m here to tell you all not to take shortcuts when creating KiCad footprints. I found some 48 pin footprint that had the right dimensions for the pins but didn’t have the right courtyard. I realised this at the time, and had left plenty of space - but came back to the project a while later, moved some stuff around to get it to route and of course - this dumbassery ensued:
These courtyards don’t overlap - this should be fine, right?
Ooops…
Now I’m waiting on some stackable headers to fix this mess…
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there’s a seller on amazon that sells ultra thin 90 degree usb micro cables on fpc ribbon… maybe that would fit?? XD
I just redesigned it, the mega rotated 180 and the MP3 board move to the other corner "it’s your quize not mine ". I added other revisions too for I2C and a DMX output .
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It’s for our Christmas departmental quiz. I did a prototype on strip board last christmas and it lead to a not perfect performace that had everyone in stiches… ( it was a strange issue between serail consoels and the arduino) … Anyway the “It’s Your Quiz , not Mine” moniker was a phrase the MP3 would spout out and was a recording of me Mimicing one of our Manages who’s known for spouting (in his scottish accent) the phrase “It’s Your…” Risk, Task, Document, Spreadshet, budget… " Not Mine… The first time the MP3 Played out was met with glorious laughter ( Appart from the manager 
)
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You mean that’s not meant to be a place you can brace your soldering iron against?
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been there done that !
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Not the worst thing to burn through …
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Found myself with an On-Off-(On) switch on my reverb module because the intermittent wasn’t labeled on the tayda bag. And off course intermittent looks to be on the dry side, and not the wet side.
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The big ones rated for higher voltage still work in my experience, but look weird on the board…
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There are much smaller ones rated for the same voltage. These are bipolar (though Tayda doesn’t list them under bipolar) but there are much smaller bipolars. I don’t know why these are so big, must be some other spec involved.
Leaving aside the diameter, the length, the termination style, and the voltage, the lead diameter is exactly the same as the hole diameter in the PCB…
(Yikes, I just looked at the BOM and… it needs work… Anyway, I used A-4223.)
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the Kosmo format is nice to use because jacks/knobs are not all crammed together like euro rack but it does take a " bigger boat " to rack them .
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100% expected and not a complaint. Will probably find something similar as a temporary placeholder for rhythm focused modules, but want to slow down and appreciate and learn these and add slowly and incrementally from here until winter before I do my next big parallel wave of modules. Very very excited to start patching these together soon.
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