Soldering of the Joystick and Power Plug

Before I placed the order of the joystick and power plug, I spent a little time looking at the power plug foot print.  To my horror, I noticed I used the wrong foot print.  Instead of a typical power plug, I added an audio RGA plug.  It was not totally my fault, the library was rather confusing and had the part number I wanted for the wrong part... but either way, I still have the problem.  I decided to buy the RGA plug and wire up the power from a hacked apart RGA wire (not shown).

Top of board with RGA plug as my power port

Bottom of board with mini nuts holding the joystick in place.

My first attempt of soldering the surface mount joystick in place went quite well.  Afterwards, I ohm'ed everything out and everything was working as it should.  The mounting holes were a little off so I decided to remount the component.  Bad idea!  I ended up ripping a pad off of the joystick.  But luckily I have one spare, and now I get to take the broken one apart!

Exploded SparkFun Joystick (PN COM-09426)

The sliding part of the joystick consists of two pieces of plastic, one for X and the other for Y.  These pieces of plastic have the contact on it to touch against the the center PWB.  Simply put, there are two linear potentiometers that make up this joystick.

Here is the link to the joystick on SparkFun's site. Joystick COM-09426