Having a board made with 4xn right angle headers, 2mm pitch. Unfortunately they were designed for board-to-board and don’t have any board-to-connector with extended pins. The pins only protrude .126" (the standard for board to board), so there will be poor retention between the mating 4x1 connectors I’m planning to mate to it. Datasheet is attached for the connector and housing. I thought this would be the place if any where hobbyists and professionals know tricks and tips to work with headers, albeit them 2mm not .1". Classic problem I’m sure we’ve all had of forcing connectors onto non-extended headers. The connections will be under decent vibration and g loads, so I’m worried they will come loose. There are also about 30 or so of them.
4XN Board-to-wire headers don’t exist. It was partially a miscommunication with the PCB designer, partially him thinking this was a viable solution. I could make some sort of clamping system to hold the connectors in place as the housing will be 3D printed in a high resolution.
You can see the setup here, I’m worried about the black connectors falling out. Each 4x1 connector is for one device, and they’ll be somewhere from half to fully populated.
Unfortunately there’s not enough room for that, a bunch of nearby components aren’t shown, but it’s more or less jammed snug on 3 of 4 sides I was really hoping there was some simple way to modify the female pin connector, to make them grab earlier, etc.
jgeating:
Unfortunately there’s not enough room for that, a bunch of nearby components aren’t shown, but it’s more or less jammed snug on 3 of 4 sides I was really hoping there was some simple way to modify the female pin connector, to make them grab earlier, etc.
The only “simple” way I can think of is to get a mating connector and mill off the plastic housing until the receptacle ends are showing. If you want to buy a few connectors and send them to me, I can try to do that at no charge to you, but I can’t make any guarantees…
Thanks, I’ll give that a try - we have a full service machine shop here. Thanks for the kind offer though!
I imagine the front of the connector keeps the female pin from falling out forward, so I think I might stake the backside of the wires, otherwise, the connector housing could just slide off backwards. I could try to mill off less, but my hunch is that this will only be a few fractions of a millimeter, maybe 1mm, before the retention portion is milled away. Let me know if you have any other clever ideas. A short bend radius is pretty important, as the wires must bend out of the way shortly after they exit the connector.
I deal with shock and vibration issues with electronics on a daily basis ruggedizing equipment for US Navy applications. When you are stuck with a situation like this, try and maximize the amount of pins/sockets in your mating connector to improve the overall retention force. Also use an electronics grade RTV to pot the edges of the connector which glues it in place. For all of our systems that have to meet shock and vibration qualifications, all large components, board-to-board connections, and board to wire connections are secured with RTV. We typically use RTV 162: http://www.skygeek.com/rtv162-3tg.html . There are cheaper options available but make sure you use electronics grade. The regular clear silicone RTVs use acetic acid as the solvent which can corrode electrical components. Electronics grade silicones use non-corrosive solvents.
I was really hoping there was some simple way to modify the female pin connector, to make them grab earlier, etc.
