Hi.
I have received my boards, and would also like the point out the placement of the connectors.
For me if would be better if the board was delivered with the connectors un-soldered. I will mount the boards in a aluminium-chassis, and then it makes sense to connect the board with thermal paste directly to the chassis for good heat transfer.
I had to cut the termination blocks that are mounted to be able to remove them, and it’s difficult to get a new header connector into the small holes after they have been soldered once.
Also it decreases the total height of the board, because there are already big capacitors on the other side, which is good for tight spaces.
So I did actually offer the ODrive v3.3 with the through hole components not soldered (you would get them in a separate bag) for this purpose. However, only 2% of people bought this configuration, so I decided it wasn’t worth the logistics to maintain the different configurations.
But thank you for your input; I think once the total volume is large enough there may be scope to offer this kind of version again.
Cheers.
When trying to clear holes in a board consider a solder sucker followed by solder braid. If you can apply heat on one side and suck on the other, it clears very well.
Low temp alloying the solder can help, with something like “chip quick”
It’s amazing how much work it is to stock one more variant. The Raspberry Pi foundation only in the last month or so started offering two versions of the Pi Zero: one with headers soldered and one without.
@madcowswe wanted to follow up on your message above as this post is over 2 years old. The store currently has the option of ODrive without connectors. Will this be available well into the future? Current designing a passive heatsink where the connectors need to be flipped and would prefer to know we can get these unpopulated for the future. Thanks.
