Hi,
One of my colleagues purchased few panel mount BNC connectors from EBAY few days ago. While I was trying to use it for one of my circuits, I found that the central/signal pin is made of plastic and it breaks very easily. Its just coated with some golden conducting substance (Check the image of connector with broken central pin. It was very shocking to find that they made it out of some kind of plastic.
Though I decided to discard those batch of connectors, I am worried about some other BNC/SMA connectors we have that were procured from unauthenticated sources. Though some of them I checked didn't have the plastic signal pin, but on checking with a magnet they were magnetic (while a amphenol ones were not). Even few BNC cables we had were having magnetic outer core. I don't know if this is a problem to worry about.
So, my question is what kind of (torture)tests should I make on general connectors/gender changers/cabels etc., to make sure that they work properly. How can I find they fit my specifications like having 50ohm impedance etc. My extreme working conditions would be have currents from few milliamps to few Amps with signals varying from sensitive DC signals to few hundreds of MHz. Any advice (other than asking to through away all of them) will be really helpful.
Thanks,
Sainath.