Two questions on assembly (stand off and thermal pad help?)

uConsole
,
1

Hi everyone - long time lurker, first time poster!

After gathering all the parts, I started assembling my uConsole today (with cm4 module). I’m planning on following some of the antenna/SDR mods the community has already been developing, but I figured I’d do a vanilla build first just to make sure all the components are working, and I ran into two problems.

  1. can anyone tell me the standoff depth/size for connecting the cm4 to the adapter board? Without any stand offs included my cm4 (obviously) just pops off :'-)

  2. the thermal pad is much too thick - seems like it’s a thermal pad that would be perfect for the old cm3 without an adapter board, but it feels like it creates too much pressure on the board. I saw a similar post about this from about a year ago, and I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for a more suitable thermal pad. I could always just hammer this one more flat…!

Thanks in advance :smiley:

2
  1. I’m confused by our question about standoffs. I didn’t see where they were needed. The CM4 snaps onto the adapter board pretty tightly and has to be pried off (carefully) to remove it. The adapter board locks into place with the silver clips on the sides. Now, I did have to bend mine a little to get them to lock the adapter in.
  2. The thermal pad is thick, but I just put it on and tightened the back on which squished it down. No real gaps or anything to speak of afterwards. Now, there are standoffs under the adapter clip to keep it from being pushed down too far so shouldn’t have to worry about that part.
3

Well, I’m a little red-faced, but you also helped me solve both problems, so I’ll leave this here in case anyone else is silly like me… :smiling_face_with_tear:

I simply wasn’t pressing my CM4 onto the adapter hard enough for it to ‘snap’, and I assumed I needed a screw in stand off or something similar to hold it in place. After it snapped into place, it also created enough clearance for the thermal pad to be squashed in.

Thank you very much for your reply!

1 Like
4

Glad I could help! I wouldn’t have known this either had I not been following the forum for a while. It’s not exactly intuitive. Removing it is just as scary. You have to find a stiff piece of plastic to gently pry at one corner then it snaps off.