Missed the first article in this two part series? Read it here!

Stringent requirements

As the number of participants in the field increases, so does the need to network them using information technology, equip them with appropriate electronics and interfaces for signal, data and power transmission, and shield them from harsh environmental conditions. Electromechanical interfaces play an important role here: they are the key to exploiting further miniaturization potential and making devices more reliable and flexible in industrial applications. However, dirt, vibrations, high temperatures and electromagnetic radiation place high demands on passive components.

Phoenix Contact responds to these requirements with a newly developed series of board-to-board connectors with 0.8 and 1.27 mm pitch. Both product families are ideally suited for the device-internal connection of several printed circuit boards. Thanks to horizontal and vertical variants, device manufacturers can implement mezzanine, orthogonal or coplanar PCB arrangements and thus offer flexible electronic layouts for different device applications.

Maximum freedom: Horizontal and vertical female connectors allow mezzanine, orthogonal and coplanar PCB arrangements

Full flexibility

All board-to-board connectors are designed for currents up to 1.4 A and voltages up to 500 VAC; and they offer solutions for 12 to 80 connection poles. Reverse polarity protection is particularly important in the compact pitches to prevent damage to the contact metals when they are mated and to ensure long-term stable connections inside the device. All board-to-board connectors are therefore polarized accordingly – the special geometry of the insulating housing reliably prevents female and male connectors from being mismatched.

Up to 500 mating and withdrawal cycles

The double-sided contacts of both product families make contact on the gold-plated rolled surfaces of the metals and thus guarantee an optimum contact force at all times, even under high shock effects of up to 50 g. Another advantage of the robust design: up to 500 mating and withdrawal cycles are possible without impairing electromechanical stability.

ScaleX contact system: The double-sided contacts provide high stability and allow up to 500 insertion and withdrawal cycles.

The unshielded Finepitch 1.27 series is suitable for stacking heights from 8 to 13.8 mm and, thanks to pre-assembled female connectors with flat ribbon cable, also enables wire-to-board applications, for example for larger PCB spacings.

The Finepitch 0.8 mm series offers particularly compact solutions for high-speed data transmission at up to 16 Gbps. Depending on the application and the required degree of protection, unshielded versions and versions with lateral shielding metals are available for maximum data integrity. Mechanically robust thanks to ScaleX technology. The hermaphroditically designed contacts of the more compact product series allow stacking heights from 6 to 12 mm. The newly developed ScaleX contact system not only guarantees particularly high mechanical stability. It also permits high tolerances for male and female connectors positioned differently for production or assembly reasons. The catch range of the Finepitch 0.8 series is ±0.7 mm per axis, the angle tolerances for mating are up to ±4 degree in longitudinal direction and ±2 degree in transverse direction. These high tolerances compensate the mechanical offset between the printed circuit boards.

Simple solution for SMT processes

The new board-to-board connectors of the Finepitch series are ideally suited for integration into the fully automated SMT process. Specially shaped and tin-plated gullwing surfaces offer a high contact area on the solder pads and thus improve the mechanical stability between the connector and the PCB surface. The soldering surfaces are designed in such a way that they still allow “overhead” soldering. This is always necessary when the printed circuit board is assembled on both sides. The unshielded versions also permit automatic optical inspection (AOI) and are delivered in a taped package for the appropriate process. Board-to-board connectors of the Finepitch 0.8 mm and 1.27 mm series offer ideal solutions for the flexible connection of several printed circuit boards in industrial electronic devices. The particularly robust contact systems allow different PCB arrangements and stacking heights and thus support flexible and modular device designs. Phoenix Contact is thus following the trend towards miniaturization and modularization of intelligence in the field. The great advantage for device manufacturers is that they can obtain tested and reliable device interfaces for the transmission of signals, data and power from a single source and can thus offer highly adaptive devices for the intelligent factory – regardless of the location and local market conditions.

Interested to find out more? Get in touch with us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg!

Robust Connection

Board-to-Board Connectors for the Industry

In the past five years, hardly any other buzzword has driven the industrial production and automation sector like “the intelligent factory”. Otherwise diverse markets as the USA, Europe and China agree on the implications: Industrial production must become more networked, more efficient, more intelligent and thus more internationally competitive. Robust board-to-board connectors are an important step along this path.

Intelligent solutions for the intelligent factory: Board-to-board connectors allow connections in new dimensions

One of the drivers of a increased competitiveness should be enhanced versions of production resources that lead to higher performance, more flexible production lines and lower manufacturing costs. For the year 2020, various analyses forecast almost 20 billion (IDC, 2016), almost 30 billion (Gartner, 2017) or even up to 50 billion (CISCO IBSG, 2011) IT-networked “things”. Even the most cautious forecast means that in just two years there will be almost three times more things communicating with each other than people.

In addition to the ubiquitous smart devices, these things also include the intelligent devices of the industrial production: controllers, power supplies, I/Os, HMIs and many more. These devices themselves have become more intelligent in recent years. Their electronic components, such as processors, could be produced at substantially lower cost and thus became more powerful and numerous. Together with their components, industrial electronic devices themselves became ever smaller, more powerful and more numerous. As a result, more intelligence from a formerly central and strictly hierarchical unit moved decentrally into the field.

Miniaturized and Reliable: Board-to-Board connectors are used for the internal connection of printed circuit boards

Stay tuned to our blog for the second part of this article, and feel free to contact us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg if you have any queries!