MSP430 Launchpad Tutorial 2: Soldering the Microcrystal to the C.B.

[thomasofacton]

that is some ugly soldering. You need to practice

[thomasofacton]

that is some ugly soldering. You need to practice

[technoshamanarchist]

Heat the pad and the pin together first, then touch the pad with soldering wire, and let it melt and spread like butter. Finally remove the soldering iron.

[comptigil]

pinches cacahuatazos se aventó!...pardon my spanish.

Looks like the soldering pen isn't hot enough, it might be the fear to overheat the PCB or the crystal, but the time it took to solder could've cause more damage. There's no reason to use flux either, with proper temperature and a little practice you can do it quickly avoiding overheating.

[yong1991k]

that is some ugly soldering... no offense

[tonyrueb]

is that scotch tape you used on the PCB? NEVER let scotch tape near electronics. Two the solder job in all fairness is very amateur.

[rifleman154]

when you solder the crystal, dont ever use flux, the flux can interfere with the clock output and slow it down which would screw up your program if its enough. You can use it fine on the pins, just dont get the flux near the crystal

[kidstar64]

Use some liquid flux. I use to not use any but once you experiance the magic of liquid flux you will never go back.

[Alfredo1987a]

i think i fucked my crystal up! are the two pins allowed to touch each other?

[eatfrog]

@Alfredo1987a ofcourse not. :D but you can fix it, desolder, remove solder, try again.

[hacky97]

this looks like a bad examplke of how to solder something small to a pcb, but I guess it just about works. At least you have achieved more than I have until now: (I keep getting the error:

"Error initializing emulator:

Could not initialize device interface"

Thre launchpad is connected to my windows7 USB interface, but it's just not working... )

[catatonicprime]

@hacky97 You still having this issue/are you using IAR Kickstart? You may just need to set your target device...