Soldering ICs

[mtloeber]

I have 8 pin and 16 pin ICs that I need to solder in, but I forgot to order their sockets.  I bought a couple of 18 pin sockets up the road, I figured I could cut them into the right sizes.  Will that work?

Or can I just solder the chips in quickly?

[ppatchmods]

the sockets will work fine if you cut them without breaking them.

[knealebrown]

You can just solder them quickly, i do it all the time at work. if you have an adjustable iron then set it too about 350 degrees and get a bit of solder on the iron first 

[mtloeber]

Well I cut the large sockets into their smaller sizes with a dremmel tool.  Looks like a clean cut.  

I need to understand something though.  Are each of the pins separate, not all hooked up one side and down the other, right?

And one more thing.  There are some pins on this socket that are solid, then others have a hole at the top of the pin.  What is that all about?

[jkokura]

Yes, all the pins are separate. If they connected they would defeat the purpose.

As for the some solid some with a hole at the top - could you post a picture or a link to a similar socket?

Jacob

[G. Hoffman]

If your technique is good, you can almost certainly solder them right in.  Tin the pads, use a bit of flux, freshly tin you tip, and get in and out as fast as you can.  Also, it's probably better to only solder at most every other pin in your first pass, then wait a bit to let the package cool down before you go back and get the rest of the pins.  I use my soldering iron at full heat (850°F) on the theory that if I get it hot enough to melt the solder quickly, a smaller portion of the IC gets hot, which probably also means less total heat involved.  Thermal dynamics is your friend!  I've soldered in plenty of IC's, and I've never had one fail on me yet.  At least, not from heat damage.  There was a badly designed power supplies that wreaked some havoc!


Gabriel