Electronic – What are the uses for a water soluble IC socket

So what are some things that adding a socket for a TTH DIP part actually does, circuit wise?

• It adds a bit of wire length to your traces (all equally)
• It adds a bit of resistance (mΩ at most, unless corroded), which depending on the socket quality changes more or less over time
• It adds a tiny bit of inductance and capacitance to your traces
• It adds more space where dirt can accumulate and form GΩish resistance paths

Mechanically it does

• add the possibility of your ICs falling out due to extreme vibration or temperature cycling or PCB flexing
• reduce the possibility of damaging the IC due to PCB flexing

So what you have to do is to think if these are a problem for your design, which we can not really do, since we have no idea about your design. But since you are using TTH parts and with a bit of guessing, what we can tell already is:

• Your bandwidth requirements are far below the case where length and inductance makes a difference
• The tiny changes in resistance will likely be much lower than the tolerances of the parts you are using already

The mechanical parts are up to your liking, and then whats only left is the dirt that can accumulate, which is also preventable in other ways.

So all in all, we can say that its pretty safe. Actually if you look at quite some older good multimeter teardowns on youtube et. al. you will see that there are quite some ICs that are socket by people who know how to design even 6-7 digit multimeters.

TL;DR

You should be fine with socketing.

So long as the IC pins connect to the right PCB tracks, the orientation of the IC socket is irrelevant.

Look at where pin 1 of your 555 IC is and make sure it's connected to the pin 1 solder pad.