Science/Engineering/Technical forums

Anyone know where I might find some Micro-d connectors cheap? 37 pin, male and female. PC mount would be nice. I have some nice super flex cables I would like to use on the gantry of my laser and they are currently terminated with these things. They want almost $100 per connector!

Jerry
Try Samtec

available through Arrow you might have to buy min number but it should be cheaper than Dodgykey or similar

Everyone is cheaper than digikey for connectors. I use Marlin P Jones (when they have stock), or even JDR microdevices. Sometimes a $5+ or higher connector at digikey is $.35 at those places.
I can't tell a quality difference!

Seems digi's pricing is set by AMP and other overpriced outfits as though the common ones were as hard to make as mil spec circular space-qualified fancy stuff (the ones that need that $200 special tool to use on top of it). It seems the connector business is pretty widely priced from place to place and time to time, and they have no compunction about charging what the market will bear from people who don't know how to fish around a little.

I have been known to replace weird connectors in commercial designs so as not to have to buy the fancy mates for them -- a lot of work once...but often worth it if you're going to be using the thing a lot with potentially different things from time to time. If I can fit a (usually a little larger) mainstream-common connector into the mechanicals, I'll do it every time, or make one adapter so after that I can use standard cheap cables from the local (Chinese-wholesale, good prices and good people) computer store after that. Even if the cheap cables have a higher failure rate, well, the ratio of price is such that they are still a bargain, even including time to troubleshoot and replace now and then.

Digikey dosnt have these little buggers. Cheapest I have found them is about $80 each. I attached a pic. You may have seen these in military and aviation stuff. There is one local surplus store I do need to check. He has some of the older odd ball stuff.

I have three sets of these cables, each with a male and female. So what I will probably end up doing is sacrificing one set for the connectors to make a set I can PC mount. Still leaves me with a spare that I will probably never need.

Pics are taken with mu new iPhone. Pretty darn good if I do say so myself! I find myself using it more for quick things than the dSLR.


Micro D connectors by macona, on Flickr

Gawd, I'd so be swapping out that "deliberately incompatible with everything so we can charge more" junk so fast all else would stop here till it was finished. I don't see any advantage but some disadvantages to essentially swapping the functions of the male and female pins, leaving the more delicate females-spring-leaves unguarded mechanically. With that kind of wiring it wouldn't be that hard. If you were working with fine-pitch flat cable, maybe I'd say something different, but....

I've seen this before on things just to make sure the manuf can sell expensive cables as a major profit center. Usually the excuse it to prevent mis-connection with something more common -- a "nice" way of calling all their users utter idiots. I'll suppress my other thoughts about that one (the please don't cuss rule)... But I don't see an advantage to that design from a functional standpoint -- the plain old ordinary cheap stuff ought to do that job fine.

And yes, that camera seems to do a really fine job -- I see why you like it (literally)

In the case of these connectors the female side is way stronger than the little male pin. I can see why the gender is reversed from the standard D connectors. Got one more set of the cables so I think I am good to go now. kind of a pain but it is easier to deal with than the FFC connectors I was going to use.

Well, I'm glad you got that one solved. I can't wait to see results of the project you're doing with this -- and in fact, I might become a customer of it -- I need some fine cutting on Ti for something.

Could that laser cutter not also do welding with the right speeds and feeds? Maybe inert atmosphere?

You need a lot more power to even touch most metals. At 80w CO2 (10600nm) the most we could do is deform a razor blade. You might be able to get away with doing more with the same power but at a shorter wavelength like YAG at 1064nm, it absorbs much more at that wavelength than at CO2s wavelength.

Guess I have a bit more to learn here. I have a 60j output ND:YAG (1.06 micron) that is supposed to punch holes in quarters with no optics, with one pulse. Haven't fired it yet. Doubt it would run CW even at lower power -- it's the highly doped version (purple rod) that is for pulsed use (water cooled krypton tubes for pumping, big caps and inductor, etc).

But razor blades actually was what I had in mind here. If it's big, my cheezy shop machines would do it anyway.

Yep, the yag crystals for flash lamp operation will not work arc lamp or diode pumped. The doping is too high. Depending on the firing rate you can do pseudo-continuous.

I was supposed to interview for a company today that works with yag lasers doing board level repair and stuff like that. But I caught a cold over the weekend so its postponed.

Building a little wire edm might be easier than doing it with laser. No heat, no warpage.