Would I have to worry about damaging anything using a 850 degree iron?

Hi, I guess you mean ºF, normal soldering temperatures are between 600ºF (315ºC) and 700ºF (370ºC).

850ºF is a bit too high... if you cannot regulate it just take care and try not to overheat the components, take time between solder one lead and the next one.

Some components, the diodes in particular, get pretty hot, so try to do it fast and leave it to cool down before applying more heat.

Thanks, Just decided to buy a cooler iron (Hakko dash 15w 680 degrees farenheit, regulated).

This board is a little bit difficult to solder. The printed circuit tin parts are too small ... or there are too much paint on the solder face. It's not a real pleasure to mount this shield.

Hi, sometimes the solder has a great impact on the soldering experience. For pedalSHIELD we use the standard open-source libraries from KiCad with standard solder pads for components but I understand that sometimes is triky. I will bear in mind for future developments, thanks for the feedback!

This was my first DIY electronics project after learning to solder, and, I had no trouble besides the trouble I willingly created for myself (desoldering an IC socket that I placed the wrong way because I'm a little OCD).

I find (so far, with limited experience) that if you use an iron around 700F with lead, narrow diameter rosin-core solder it makes most (small electronics) work easy. The only exception being making through-hole jumps. This is a bit easier with lead-free solder and a slightly hotter iron (assuming you have the luxury of temp regulation).

P.S. also the lead fumes are addictive :b

I would have to agree re the solder pads. They're rather on the small side, and the mask feels it was over printed. May I suggest a solder pad of at least 1mm wide from the center hole. Pads for the larger components were perfect...nice and big, allowing good contact. With the large ground plane, some did require some preheating but a few seconds of a well regulated iron seemed to do the trick nicely.

I found the solder flowed easier with the application of a little noclean on each of the components I was soldering. Yes, it took a fair bit of noclean, however solder flowed through the joints nicely as expected and the pedal works nicely. I nocleaned the previous spots and they reflowed ok too.