Connector PCB Miracle

The humble connector keeps electricity flowing between all the parts of a Printed Circuit Board. It can take a lot of stress and still maintain its vital role in keeping our gadgets connected. There are thousands of off-the-shelf options in the PCB connector catalog, and custom designs can be done quickly with Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) charges.

High-Reliability Connectors

If your connector PCBs need to function in harsh environments, the best solution is a high-reliability connector. These are characterized by their ability to withstand severe conditions that can cause other connectors to fail, such as vibration or extreme temperatures. To achieve this, they often feature special constructions to ensure that the connection is strong and that no damage will occur.

There are several different types of high-reliability connectors, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Some are made with crimp termination, where one part of the contact is pressed against another to mechanically tighten the connection. Others use solder cups, where the end of each contact is capped with a solder pin that can be inserted into a hole on a circuit board.

Some of the most rugged connectors are designed to meet stringent military standards. These Connector PCB Miracle are typically marked with a MIL-DTL or BS part number, and have been rigorously tested to ensure that they can withstand extreme conditions.

For example, the M300 series of connectors from Harwin is an extremely rugged, compact interconnect system suitable for aerospace, defence and other demanding applications. It offers both board-to-board and cable-to-board connections, with up to 594 contact positions in a single 2 or 3 row housing, combining signal, power and fibre optic contacts. In addition, its hyperboloid contacts are immune to vibration and shock.

Pin Header and Socket Connectors

There are a wide variety of PCB connectors to meet the specific needs of various applications. These include high-reliability designs to resist stress and vibration from environmental factors, as well as simple, standard connectors that provide stability for everyday use. Among the most basic of these are pin header and socket connectors. These are paired together to form a circuit board interconnect, with male pins fitting into female sockets or receptacles. These are also known as PCB headers, PCB pins, or even plugs.

A pin header consists of square pins that are shaped into an insulating plastic material to create a male connector. These are typically sold in long strips (generally 36, 40, or 50 pins) that can be cut apart to the required number of positions. Several pin dimensions are available to minimize labor during PCB assembly.

Female sockets or receptacles are commonly used to connect wires or other components to the PCB. These can either be individual wires with crimp connectors, or ribbon cables with insulation displacement connectors, which have sockets to mate with the pin headers. The sockets can be inserted into breadboards or soldered directly to the pins. There are a number of ways to connect these types of connectors, depending on your skill set and project application. The thin solder tabs on pin headers can break if bent excessively, and they may become loose in a breadboard socket if they’re not positioned correctly. As a result, Amphenol FCI Clincher connectors have been designed with thicker leads and breadboard-compatible sockets to ensure a more reliable connection.

Multilayer PCBs

Multilayer PCBs combine the functions of multiple circuit boards into one, reducing or eliminating the need for connectors and creating a smaller product. They require more design time, are harder to manufacture and can be more expensive than standard PCBs. However, the advantages of using multilayer PCBs outweigh their costs.

These layered printed circuit boards are used in modern-day consumer electronic appliances such as computers, smart devices and smartphones. Their small size and high functionality allows them to compete with larger, bulkier and less compact gadgets in the market.

The layered structure also helps to reduce weight and size. They can be designed to have a single or dual ground level and feature several different options of vias (standard, blind and buried) for routing. In addition, the buried vias can be located at any point in the inner layer and are not visible from either of the outer layers.

Multilayer PCBs are more complicated to produce, and even a small flaw in the production process can render them useless. They are also more expensive to rework than standard PCBs, and they must be produced in an SD(electrostatic discharge)-safe and cleanroom environment. This type of manufacturing setup is costly and requires extensive expertise, which limits the number of manufacturers that can offer multilayer PCBs to their clients. These issues make it crucial to check a PCB manufacturer’s capabilities before selecting them as your contract manufacturer.

Audio Attenuators

Whether you’re building an amp, a preamp or a power amplifier, audio attenuators will help your components to work together. They can reduce the output level from a signal to match the input level of your amplifier, prevent overload and distortion. They can also lower the volume of a speaker’s signal, making it easier to control.

Most of these attenuators are constructed from networks of high-power resistors and feature a stepped design. They may be active (requiring external circuitry to provide an output) or passive, meaning that they don’t require any external power supply. They’re usually matched to 600 ohms and can be configured to reduce the input voltage by a number of steps, with the step sizes usually specified in dB.

One thing to watch for when selecting an attenuator is its tracking, which refers to how closely the channels are matched to each other. All attenuators have some variation Connector PCB Miracle Supplier between the left and right channels, but a quality design will try to minimize this as much as possible.

ANAVI Miracle Controller is an open source hardware Wi-Fi development board powered by the ESP8266 and designed to support up to two 5 V or 12 V addressable LED strips simultaneously. It supports popular LEDs such as Neopixel, WS2812B and TM1804, but it can also be used to control other I2C sensor modules. The board is available from a number of retailers and distributors around the world.