Soldering Sockets and Header Pins on Straight

Solder sockets and header pins on straight every time.  Start by soldering down only two points on a row of header pins or an ic socket, one on each side.  Then check the alignment of the pins/socket before soldering the rest of the pins down.  This way if things are not aligned you can easily reheat one of your soldering points and straighten out part.

Comments

[alcurb]

" This way if things are not aligned you can easily reheat one of your soldering points and straighten out part." I've done this a few times and always forget to not hold the header by the pin that is getting re-heated. I got burned by that a few times quite literally! What I do now is plug the headers into a standard arduino and fit the shield board over that. The pins should be perfectly aligned and gravity does a nice job holding the shield board down while you solder.