Directly soldered wire to board connection strategies for volume production

[redreobingarden]

Hello! We are working on a product that has some wires directly soldered to a PCB. These are internal wires that never move and we have decided that we can save costs by omitting connectors.

I was wondering if there are any best practices on this. At this point I'm aware of only two ways of doing this:

1. Plated thru-hole on the PCB. Stripped+tinned wire goes in plated thru-hole, solder+soldering iron applied to make the joint.

2. Sufficiently large pad on PCB that can be covered in a layer of solder from either a wave-soldering or re-flow process. Operator then just has to place a stripped and tinned wire on the pre-soldered pad and hit it with a soldering iron.

It seems that if there is space available on the PCB, number 2 is the best option? Are there any other options that you guys have had experience with? Thanks!

 

[barry]

#2 might be easier, but it's also makes it a lot easier to rip the pad off the board. I wouldn't do it without some kind of strain relief. You could drill a hole or two through the PCB and route the wire through them to add some strain relief.

 

[ard]

And, some hot melt glue would help keeping the wires in place, in case they break at the solder point.

 

[horace1]

I find option 1 the plated thru hole the best solution