On Mar 7, 2008, at 10:15 PM, Cedric Chang wrote:
>
>
> My friend is brilliant but she is two dozen short of a gross when it
> comes to manual dexterity.  She finds many connectors a PITA to
> handle.  Hard to connect, hard to disconnect and of course, some
> connectors spontaneously disconnect or have lousy contact.
>
> What is the best connector for resolving these issues ?  Size does
> not matter ( cannot be as large as a battleship or we have the
> opposite problem : requires a monkey boy to wrestle it into position )
>

RF "N" connectors... but that's probably not the type of connector you  
want.  :-)

Engineering works of art, really -- no impedance "bump" through very  
high frequencies, solid connection, big enough to really get nice and  
tight... and my big fingers can get ahold of them.

SMA connectors piss me off.  BNC too.  Threaded BNC, only slightly  
less so.  So-called "UHF" and mini-UHF are trash, but commonly seen on  
various 2-way radio gear.  Annoying that the manufacturers won't spend  
another buck on N-connectors.  Size-wise, it usually doesn't matter  
that much to the physical design characteristics of the back panel.

Sorry... I digress.  You want low-voltage connectors, right?  You just  
said "connectors".  (GRIN)

RJ connectors (someone else mentioned them) are okay, but I've spent  
three days cleaning up a mess where an entire callcenter had WAY too  
many "weird" things going on, and what I found was that the tech that  
installed hundreds of RJ45's, used solid-conductor RJ45's crimped onto  
stranded-conductor wiring.  What a freakin' nightmare until we figured  
that out.   Re-crimping hundreds of connectors using the right high- 
quality Amphenol-brand RJ45's for STRANDED conductor wires, fixed  
almost every problem that call-center had.  That and finding a few  
"shiners" on some wire-wraps and a few mis-punched wires in the punch- 
down blocks.  (Someone got sloppy or worked too fast originally, and  
our re-work was the classic example of... "If you can't take the time  
to do it right, you'll just be doing it again."

So RJ's done wrong can be horrid, and they're not easy to put together  
in the first place for someone with limited dexterity.

Plus on RJ's, the little plastic locking tabs have a tendency to break  
off the body of the connector when mishandled... usually when  
untangling a stored/rolled cable with RJ's on it.  All of the "guards"  
that have been designed to protect the tab are almost always more  
annoying than breaking the tab and having to crimp a new one on.

The MagSafe connector on my MacBook (if you don't mind the magnets --  
and the Japanese have been using these on kitchen appliances for  
years, I hear) would have to take the top honors for the easiest on  
and off connector that still maintains good contact unless I do  
something stupid like trip over the laptop cable... then it pops off  
with no damage to either side.

Wish I had more of them on things... they're great.

You do have to design (for this particular type) the circuit to work  
right-side up or upside-down, however... because the one on the laptop  
isn't keyed... and it's five pin and probably the magnetic outer  
"ring" is ground (never looked up how they work) but a keyed one or  
one with an curved or keyed receptacle would be cool too.  Absolutely  
the easiest to use electrical connector I've ever used.

--
Nate Duehr
nate@natetech.com



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