Electronics > PCB/EDA/CAD

Using sockets instead of components

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JSanders:
Personally I’ve never had a socket fail – ever, but have experience many relay’s that have needed replacement. As for the effort needed in replacing a soldered component vs one mounted in a socket is night and day.

The boards are to be located inside an enclosure with mounting screws / standoffs and have several wired connections. In order to change out a soldered component, everything must be disconnected, the board un-screwed, removed and taken to a workbench. Heating / wicking or vacuuming the old solder to remove the relay, cleaning the pads in preparation of applying new solder, then the actual installation of the replacement relay.

During this process the board could possibly be damaged, a cold solder joint could ensue and if nothing adverse takes place then the cleaning any flux residue would follow proceeding the re-installation - remounting it into the enclosure and hooking up the wired connections.

With a socket mounted component one need only power down the system, pull the old relay and replace with the new. There’s minimal concern for accidental damage to nearby component and absolutely zero concerns in creating a cold solder joint. There’d be no worries in causing damage to the wired connections as they’d all stay in place as the board wouldn’t have to be removed from it’s enclosure.

Also when dealing with components that have a lower then optimal MTBF, which can be easily replaced, one can justify / entertain the idea of preventative maintenance if desired or if it were deemed a critical system. While that’s not the case here it is something we’ve done in the past which simply wouldn’t be feasible with soldered components.

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