Re: high curent PCB connector

On 16/02/2025 9:43 pm, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:
 

On 16/02/2025 3:17 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sat, 15 Feb 2025 14:13:20 +0000, piglet <erichpwagner@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>

On 15/02/2025 12:20 am, Phil Hobbs wrote:

piglet <erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote:

john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

Does anyone have a favorite high-current PCB connector?
>
I'd like to get 20 wires into a pluggable connector, to go on a
module like this:
>
https://highlandtechnology.com/Product/P948
>
We need at least 7 amps per contact.
>
That litle green Phoenix connector is cool. Wires screw into it
without tooling, and it's easy to mate and unmate. But it's only 5
pins.
>
I was planning to use four of them, with two on a baby board, but
that idea wasn't popular.
>
>

>
Phoenix  do make 20 pin version (as two rows of ten) with 10 amp per
pin on 200 mil pitch.
>

>
Do they actually make them m, as in somebody has them for sale, or are
they just listed in a catalogue?
>
Connector catalogs are full of things that they would love to make for
you if you want to order 100,000 pieces and can wait six months.
>
Cheers
>
Phil Hobbs
>

>
But JL's customers are aerospace so will be used to exotic, hard to
find connectors - would they respect him for using an easily buyable
connector :)
>
piglet

>
The nice thing about the Phoenix connectors is that you don't need a
soldring iron or pins and crimp tools to terminate wires, just a small
screwdriver.

>
That's not nice. It's just cheap. At Cambridge Instruments the argument
for going over to crimp connectors was that you found a lot less duff
connections when you were putting product through final test.
>
The parts and tools were more expensive, but fault-finding and fault
correction were expensive enough to tip the balance.

 Was the cost of repair throughout the equipment's lifetime taken into
account?  Faulty crimps, especially if the wires are a bit short, can
take ages to put right.

Probably not. The crystal ball that tells you how often a crimp will fail over the lifetime of a particular bit of equipment hadn't been been invented back then and I haven't been offered one recently.
The parts I had in mind were coax connectors, and you can check them very quickly with a time domain reflectorometer (and we had a couple of them).
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney