Written by Duncan Nicol, Market Segment Manager- Device Connections
Imagine a food processing production line where freshly prepared ingredients are rushing down the line being prepared for tomorrow’s ready meal. This is a time critical process where a line failure can result in the loss of valuable produce and a missed delivery deadline. A stopped production line costs money, simple as that, and so when designing the electronics used to run production lines, reliability is a key requirement.
Of course, these days with automated assembly and test, electronic devices are significantly more reliable than they were a few years ago but despite this, things occasionally do still go wrong.
Electronic devices can be vulnerable to failure for a wide range of reasons including: component failure, power surges, EMC, contamination from leaks and spillages. Therefore, when things do go wrong, speed is of the essence to fix the failure.
The new single row SDC 2.5 and double row SDDC 1.5 range of device connectors offer significant advantages over more conventional device connector solutions. The conventional approach to a maintenance-friendly plug and play solution is a plug and header allowing the device to be unplugged and replaced quickly. The down side to a plug and header is the inherent cost associated with a two part connector and the associated two step assembly time.
The SDC 2.5 & SDDC 1.5 PCB connectors are direct plug-in connectors with push-in technology. With a conventional plug and header solution, the location of the header is often dictated by other components on the PCB to avoid thermal shadowing during reflow. A second assembly step is then required to wire and fit the plug.
With the new SDC 2.5 and SDDC 1.5 connectors, assembly is carried out in one step post reflow and, because of this, the location on the PCB can be chosen to suit the connector and not the components nearby. Press-fit technology offers other advantages as it is often found in high vibration applications such as the automotive industry, it’s more reliable than soldering and is fitted by hand. Anchor lugs are used to securely hold the connector on the PCB and a number of coding options are available.
All this means that the SDC & SDDC can be pre-wired and assembled post reflow and then simply unplugged with the wiring intact if the PCB needs to be replaced due to a failure.
The new SDC 2.5 & SDDC 1,5 connector technology for our connected world. Push-in, Plug-in, it’s done!
For more information, contact Duncan on 07799 072 059 or email: dnicol@phoenixcontact.com
