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Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: matthuszagh on November 23, 2024, 01:20:14 am

Title: Pin protrusion in commercial SMA cable assemblies
Post by: matthuszagh on November 23, 2024, 01:20:14 am

I finally got around to using a Maury A027 gage kit to measure a number of SMA cable assemblies I purchased (unfortunately all were purchased prior to the purchase of the gage kit). I was pretty shocked to find that almost all of them failed spec and did so through pin protrusion (6/8 CentricRF, 1/1 Crystek, and 3/4 Mini-Circuits). These weren't cheap cables either. Some of the Mini-Circuits cables had over 5 mil of protrusion.

I also measured some really nice cables I have (Gore PhaseFlex from eBay) and unsurprisingly those were spot on what they should be.

I was mostly under the impression this is not something I needed to worry about if I wasn't buying cheap Amazon/etc. cables.

Is this really that pervasive? What do people do for cables? It seems one approach is to order cables with the expectation that most will need to be sent back.

I sunk a good chunk of money into these cables. I'm trying to return them, but it's years later so that may be no good. Lesson learned I suppose.

Title: Re: Pin protrusion in commercial SMA cable assemblies
Post by: Simon on November 23, 2024, 01:00:01 pm

see: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/pin-protrusion-in-custom-sma-cable-assembly/msg5723685/#msg5723685 (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/pin-protrusion-in-custom-sma-cable-assembly/msg5723685/#msg5723685)