On May 23, 2004, at 8:48 AM, Bob Paddock wrote:
...and if you finally get just enough heat in there to get it melted, you will likely wind up with your soldering iron permanently welded to the PCB. Been there, done that...doh! :-(A "thermal" is usually used when connecting a pad or pin to an interlayer.A document explaining the basics and the terminology (I still don't know what a "thermal" is) might help.
It is generally a shape of "X" or "+", where only the four end points connect
to the interlayer.
If you do not use a "thermal" the entire interlayer plane becomes a heat-sink
that sucks away the heat, hence thermal, making it impossible to solder that
point, because you can never get it hot enough to melt the solder.