Getting the hang of through-hole soldering is tricky for those of us tinkering at home with our irons, spools, flux, and, sometimes, braids. It’s almost reassuring, then, to learn that through-hole soldering was also a pain for a firm that has made more than 60 million products with it.
Raspberry Pi boards have a combination of surface-mount devices (SMDs) and through-hole bits. SMDs allow for far more tiny chips, resistors, and other bits to be attached to boards by their tiny pins, flat contacts, solder balls, or other connections. For those things that are bigger, or subject to rough forces like clumsy human hands, through-hole soldering is still required, with leads poked through a connective hole and solder applied to connect and join them securely.
The Raspberry Pi board has a 40-pin GPIO header on it that needs through-hole soldering, along with bits like the Ethernet and USB ports. These require robust

Link to original post https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/raspberry-pi-cuts-product-returns-by-50-by-changing-up-its-pin-soldering/ from Teknoids News

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