A Guide to Help You with PCB Connectors

Electrical components on a conductive track or between pads on the board are connected by a ‘PCB’ or Printed Circuit Board. Some devices carry more than one PCB and use a range of devices to establish a connection between the boards.

PCB conector are mounted on the PCB and are usually used for the transfer of signals or power from one PCB to another, or for the transfer to or from the PCB inside the device from another source. Connectors offer a simple manufacturing design tool, as the PCBs are not hard-wired to each other and can be assembled in a manufacturing process later.

There are various types of PCB connector that need to perform different roles on the board. The size, weight, and power (SWaP) properties of the connectors used in the PCB design will be determined by the final application. A connector used within a cell phone, for example, would need to be smaller and lighter to withstand high current than a connector used within a vehicle.

Types of PCB connectors

A broad range of PCB connectors is available on the market from , all designed to fulfill the needs of particular applications. Some connectors, for example, specialize in avoiding vibration and shock from environmental variables and provide stability under stressful conditions. For highly sensitive applications, other connector styles are far more fragile, or of a more common, economical nature for industrial production and manufacturing.

High-Reliability connectors are critical for the more stressful environmental conditions to ensure that electrical communication is not interrupted. The Pin Header and Socket designs of the PCB connectore are perfectly appropriate for more static equipment for the job. You can shop for the best type of connectors from SMARTX electronic. 

The info that you need to have

If you plan to track and search out connectorsin the wild, then you’re going to need to know how to speak and behave like one, so you can blend in! First off, in one of two genders, male or female, every connector comes. These male and female connectors have what are called definite mating periods, which means that before they separate, they can only be linked and disconnected a certain number of times! USB connectors, for instance, are built to be mated thousands of times, whereas anything like a power connector from Molex can only mate a couple of times before going belly up.

This connector family came about because engineers wanted a simple way to link electrical wires together without physically having to join mechanical parts. On certain PCBs, where a portion of the terminal block is connected to the board, you can see terminal blocks being used, and the other section containing the wires can be removed for a simple swapping phase at will.

Understanding the family from which a connector comes will help you understand common features that are shared as a common base of that family easily. For instance, USB is part of the family of connectors and sockets, which all have a male and female counterpart. And while there are several forms of USB, their family base is still shared, and they just look and behave a little differently!