Low profile teensy mounting

GMeier_Onda

New member
Hey. I'm trying to make a circuitboard for a potential product that uses the Teensy4.1 on it, but I only have ~6mm of height to fit everything in. Do you guys know any ways that I could mount the teensy to a motherboard in this space? I figured that if the teensy was flipped upside down and I put a cutout in the motherboard for all of the teensy's surface mount components, I could mount it nearly board-to-board. Is there some sort of low-profile surface-mount/through-hole connector any of you guys know of? I was thinking of a sort of cylindrical pin that could surface mount to the motherboard, but solder through hole to the Teensy.

Mounted Teensy Concept
Mounted Teensy.PNG

Motherboard without Teensy
Concept Motherboard.PNG

Surface-mount / through-hole pin
Pin in mm.PNG
 
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Don't use a connector. Use wires. I've done that and used the pins from a pack of old though-hole resistors I had no other use for..
 
Is this hand solder to motherboard or machine bulk assembly?

Flipping it will make USB access blocked?
Direct solder like that will make it 'permanent'.

Perhaps just standard male header pins soldered to motherboard, then remove the plastic spacer and drop the T_4.1 onto the pins and top solder, then trim the pin tops if they are too tall?

On TINDIE is a Flip Pins Set that comes in a 'header container' that can be soldered - then the container slips off - exposing the other side to solder, but they may be too tall.

<edit> The @KenHahn crosspost mill-max suggestion looks better ...
 
If you place the Teensy on a border of your board, you can still use USB.
However, to use both, SD and USB, you have to flip it, I think.
 
Is this hand solder to motherboard or machine bulk assembly?

Flipping it will make USB access blocked?
Direct solder like that will make it 'permanent'.

Perhaps just standard male header pins soldered to motherboard, then remove the plastic spacer and drop the T_4.1 onto the pins and top solder, then trim the pin tops if they are too tall?

On TINDIE is a Flip Pins Set that comes in a 'header container' that can be soldered - then the container slips off - exposing the other side to solder, but they may be too tall.

<edit> The @KenHahn crosspost mill-max suggestion looks better ...

It's going to be a mix, bulk components like resistors, capacitors, etc. are going to be placed with a machine, but only a few would be made at a time, so low qty items like microcontrollers would be placed by hand before they go into the reflow oven.

The mill-max low-profile headers look pretty promising. Since I'm using solder paste, I'd bet I could have cutouts in the stencil to solder the pins to the motherboard during the reflow process. Then if the pads on the motherboard don't have the solder mask removed on the bottom side, they could be trimmed flush. The pins coming out of the teensy would still stick out a little, but I think I could make it fit.

After looking for parts in the same category on digikey, the mill-max 5316-0-00-15-00-00-03-0 looks like it might be the near-perfect option. I'll have to see how easy it is to solder though.
A little bit pricy for pins but I guess they have to go through a lot more machining than standard headers do.

If the MIMXRT1062DVJ6B was in-stock anywhere, I'd be thinking about just building the teensy circuit into the motherboard at this point. BGAs are a pain though.

The USB and SD card shouldn't be used on the final product, but I'll still leave enough of a cutout on the motherboard to fit a 90 degree MicroUSB connector.
 
Do you need Ethernet? If not, perhaps you could use Teensy MicroMod. The height of the Adafruit ATP board + TeensyMM seems to be less than 6 mm, and you could place the USB and SD connectors where you want.
 
Didn't know the Teensy MicroMod was a thing. With an Amphenol MDT275B01001, 1.6mm motherboard, 0.89mm motherboard to teensy gap, 1.6mm teensy, and 1.7mm screw head, 5.79mm total height fits the bill for sure. I might be able to shave off a millimeter with a thinner motherboard and a shorter M.2 connector, but at this point "if it fits, it sits".

It'd definitely be easier to solder and assemble than 46 individual pins.

Thanks a bunch
 
Great. Note that Teensy MM is by Sparkfun, not Adafruit. There are threads on this forum about designing around TMM. The mapping of Micromod pin numbers onto equivalent T41 pin numbers is a bit confusing, but the docs are on the Sparkfun site.
 
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