Connectors, was [sdiy] bit one

[The Peasant]

I strongly agree with using high quality/gold pins and sockets. The equipment 
that I have encountered that have had problems with tin connectors includes 
everything from industrial/laboratory equipment from manufacturers such as 
Baush & Lomb, & Fisher Scientific, to multi-million $$ X-ray machines from 
Varian, Siemens and others.

The smart manufacturers like Varian are now all using gold plated machined 
contacts exclusively, with extremely high reliability. When a signal has to go 
through a dozen or so sets of contacts to get from source to input circuit, 
you really don't have much choice.

The worst connectors that I have found are the rectangular pin in-line white 
plastic amp/molex type with tin plated contacts. The female contacts are one-
sided and don't have a lot of contact force, I think the molex KK type is one 
example. They are similar to computer mother board power supply plugs in pcs, 
but considerably looser and with less insertion force (the computer type plugs 
are OK.) Especially where there are temperature changes (power supplies), 
these type quickly oxidize and go intermittant. Many small linear and 
switching power supplies use these connectors, I've seen them fail many, many 
times.

Take care,
Doug
______________________
The Electronic Peasant

www.electronicpeasant.com


Quoting Scott Stites <scottnoanh at peoplepc.com>:

> Hi gang,
> 
> I work in the customer service department for a test equipment manufacturer,
> and
> the term "Gold Pin Mod" is ubiquitous to everything that was produced up
> until a
> few years ago, when my department started forcing its hand.
> 
> It has to do with tin connectors, particularly on but sometimes not limited
> to,
> the power supplies.  Invariably, as time progressed, the equipment would
> become
> unreliable, jumpy, -generally screwed up in other words - and the customer
> would
> send it in.  Automatically, we'd replace the pins in the power supply
> connectors
> with gold plated pins, and soon we just started doing it automatically to
> anything that was in warranty.  Worked like a charm in exactly 100% of the
> cases.
>  Putting in tin connectors only bought a bit of time, and we are of the
> philosphy
> that you don't clean anything - you replace (these are high dollar boxes to
> begin
> with).  I finally moved up to 'core' development teams, and I *never* would
> sign
> off on anything that didn't have gold plated connectors on the power
> supplies,
> BOM price be damned.  
> 
> Of course, these are service monitors that get a lot of field work in all
> kinds
> of environments, but all the same - if I had a tasty vintage synth like that,
> I'd
> raid Fort Knox and see if there wasn't some way to put in gold plated
> connectors.
>  Just a thought......
> 
> Cheers,
> Scott