carvinguy said:
It is not common practice to place a via in a pad.
I don't know where you got this information from or what kind of experience you have in this field, but I strongly disagree with this opinion.
I used to be a electronics repairman for 5 years and mostly reapired brown goods.
I have seen many diiferent PCBs, and all the 2 or 4 sided PCBs I have seen had through hole plating in all the solder pad holes.
This can make it very annoying to desolder 40 pin DIP IC's etc, so that's one disadvantage. You need to have a good desoldering station with good suction to remove all the soler. Somtimes you have to put on new solder and repeat the process to get all the solder inside the holes removed.
I cannot recall I have ever seen a though hole plated PCB without plating in the solder pad holes, so I believe this is not a common pratice.
I have seen some double sided PCBs without through hole plating at all; but at all the through hole plated PCBs I have seen, there have also been plating in the solder pads.
Has anyone seen through hole plated PCBs without plating in the solder pad holes?
I think this is very rare, what do you say?
There's also an advangate in using through hole plating in the solder pads, because this will save you some extra additinal though hole platings outside the solder pads. This can save space and it can also make the PCB cheaper because the PCB manufacturer don't have to drill as many holes in the PCB for extra vias.
Try to check all the PCBs (for example development kit's etc.) you have laying around from other manufactures and check how many of the through hole plated PCBs has plating in the solder pads too. My guess is that it is all of them. Ofcourse it can sometimes be hard to verify when the boards are soldered, but just check if there is solder at both sides of the hole at some of the holes.
It seems such a common pratice to make though hole plating in solder pads, so I would just say go ahead and use this. There must be a reason why almost everyone uses this practice.