Pete Prodoehl's 3D

Dec 04, 2023

Maker Pete Prodoehl has designed a tool inspired by a solderless breadboard, but for the exact opposite purpose: making it easier to solder pin headers onto devices.

"I created what I am calling a 'Solder Board,'" Prodoehl explains of his simple yet handy creation, "which is like a breadboard but with no internal connectors. The solder board is used for… soldering! Specifically, for soldering pins onto PCBs, and in this case, onto microcontrollers."

The Solder Board draws its inspiration from the solderless breadboard, which allows components to be fitted into regularly-spaced holes and then connected using hidden circuit traces and jumper wires — or, in the case of the Jumperless Breadboard, switches — without needing to be soldered. As the name implies, however, the Solder Board very much requires soldering — or, rather, is designed to make soldering easier.

"For years I’ve soldered pins onto PCBs by jamming header pins into whatever breadboard was lying around and then slapping the PCB onto the pins, soldering the pins on, and then prying the board off," Prodoehl explains. "It works… mostly."

While Prodoehl's approach was later upgraded to a mini-breadboard tapes to a chunk of aluminum for heft, the maker never considered it ideal — and with a large quantity of Raspberry Pi Pico boards needing headers, he set about building something better.

"[The] 3D printed 'Solder Board' […] was specifically designed for soldering header pins in place, unlike a typical breadboard. Put the header pins in place… no hard pressing required," Prodoehl writes. "The holes are sized such that they just drop right in. Solder those pins and the board lifts right out. No prying! No pulling. Heck, you can probably flip it over and the board will fall right out."

Based on a parametric design, the tool — modeled in OpenSCAD — can be configured for any number of holes, either to fit a specific device like the Raspberry Pi Pico or to provide more flexibility for differing sized boards. Its main advantage over breadboards, bar always being the perfect size for the task at hand: it doesn't tightly grip the pins, nor does it provide what is effectively a metal heatsink at the base of each to bleed away heat and make the soldering process more difficult than it needs to be.

More details on the Solder Board are available on Prodoehl's website, while the OpenSCAD design file and printable STL are available from Printables under the Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International license.