Products > Test Equipment
Why rotary-tip on 4mm banana plugs?
MrCAL:
--- Quote from: tooki on September 08, 2024, 06:23:45 pm ---
--- Quote from: The Soulman on September 08, 2024, 03:22:25 pm ---Anyone used these style as sold by ab-precision?
--- End quote ---
I don’t know who ab-precision is, but the original article made by Stäubli (formerly Multi-Contact), part numbers in tggzzz’s post above, are excellent.
In addition to the benefits that tggzzz listed and mawyatt confirmed, they also have the unique ability to be mated plug-to-plug on the male side, since you can just shove one plug into the other, and still use the stacking jacks on the backs. Their light weight also makes them ideal for test leads made of thin wire, so that there isn’t a heavy plug dangling off a thin lead. I used them to make banana-to-DuPont cables, for example. The way that their spring force works makes them fit snugly in basically any jack, yet without being annoyingly hard to use in tight jacks.
The downsides are that they only make solder versions of them, and just as mawyatt said, they can snag when inserting them into certain jacks, so careful alignment is sometimes necessary.
--- End quote ---
But perhaps their resistance/voltage-drop are higher than other jacks?
The wall/tube seems thin and it's likely made of relatively low-conducting-metal, because it need to have a spring-property, unless they are made of a special copper-alloy-mix? Or will the gold-plating compensate for that?
Are they rated just as high? 16-32A?
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: MrCAL on September 08, 2024, 09:20:34 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on September 08, 2024, 06:23:45 pm ---
--- Quote from: The Soulman on September 08, 2024, 03:22:25 pm ---Anyone used these style as sold by ab-precision?
--- End quote ---
I don’t know who ab-precision is, but the original article made by Stäubli (formerly Multi-Contact), part numbers in tggzzz’s post above, are excellent.
In addition to the benefits that tggzzz listed and mawyatt confirmed, they also have the unique ability to be mated plug-to-plug on the male side, since you can just shove one plug into the other, and still use the stacking jacks on the backs. Their light weight also makes them ideal for test leads made of thin wire, so that there isn’t a heavy plug dangling off a thin lead. I used them to make banana-to-DuPont cables, for example. The way that their spring force works makes them fit snugly in basically any jack, yet without being annoyingly hard to use in tight jacks.
The downsides are that they only make solder versions of them, and just as mawyatt said, they can snag when inserting them into certain jacks, so careful alignment is sometimes necessary.
--- End quote ---
But perhaps their resistance/voltage-drop are higher than other jacks?
The wall/tube seems thin and it's likely made of relatively low-conducting-metal, because it need to have a spring-property, unless they are made of a special copper-alloy-mix? Or will the gold-plating compensate for that?
Are they rated just as high? 16-32A?
--- End quote ---
19A, at the the voltages I previously noted.
Horses for courses; select the course then select the horse.
tooki:
--- Quote from: MrCAL on September 08, 2024, 09:20:34 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on September 08, 2024, 06:23:45 pm ---I don’t know who ab-precision is, but the original article made by Stäubli (formerly Multi-Contact), part numbers in tggzzz’s post above, are excellent.
In addition to the benefits that tggzzz listed and mawyatt confirmed, they also have the unique ability to be mated plug-to-plug on the male side, since you can just shove one plug into the other, and still use the stacking jacks on the backs. Their light weight also makes them ideal for test leads made of thin wire, so that there isn’t a heavy plug dangling off a thin lead. I used them to make banana-to-DuPont cables, for example. The way that their spring force works makes them fit snugly in basically any jack, yet without being annoyingly hard to use in tight jacks.
The downsides are that they only make solder versions of them, and just as mawyatt said, they can snag when inserting them into certain jacks, so careful alignment is sometimes necessary.
--- End quote ---
But perhaps their resistance/voltage-drop are higher than other jacks?
--- End quote ---
Their maximum current is not as high as the highest-current ones from Stäubli and Hirschmann, but still excellent, as tggzzz said.
Their very large contact area, and the fact that the contact itself is quite small (so even if the resistivity is higher, the total resistance is not) means the overall resistance is still very low.
--- Quote from: MrCAL on September 08, 2024, 09:20:34 pm ---The wall/tube seems thin and it's likely made of relatively low-conducting-metal, because it need to have a spring-property, unless they are made of a special copper-alloy-mix?
--- End quote ---
Beryllium copper according to Stäubli. (Good to know, should I ever need to file one down!) So definitely not a low-conductivity metal. (That is a weird assumption to make for a top-quality electrical connector.)
--- Quote from: MrCAL on September 08, 2024, 09:20:34 pm ---Or will the gold-plating compensate for that?
--- End quote ---
Gold is not used as contact plating for its conductivity — copper and silver are much better — but for its resistance to corrosion.
coppice:
--- Quote from: tooki on September 08, 2024, 11:39:11 pm ---Gold is not used as contact plating for its conductivity — copper and silver are much better — but for its resistance to corrosion.
--- End quote ---
Gold plating is not even used when you want really good trouble free contact quality for small signals, such as with microphones, that tolerate a large number of insertion cycles. Things like rhodium alloys are used in places like the BBC where they want contacts that just work.
tooki:
I thought rhodium is for high-current contacts, because that is what gold sucks at. (For example, Apple changed the plating on the Lightning connector — or maybe just on the power pins, I don’t remember — from gold to rhodium precisely because the gold plating was getting blitzed off due to arcing when hot-plugging/unplugging while charging.)
My understanding is that different gold alloy platings are used for different applications, including harder ones for high cycle counts.
Aaaaahahahhaahhaa the audiophools think rhodium has a “taint” to the sound: https://audioaddictsforum.com/thread/2181/rhodium-plating 😂
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version