Eufalconimorph

Eufalconimorph, 1 year ago

The Internet corollary to Murphy's Law: If you post something, it's public forever unless you need it later, then it'll have link-rotted. Anything you want to delete will be archived, anything you want to save will be deleted.

Eufalconimorph, 1 year ago

Mini-PV is the standard (in that DuPont used to make them), but the M20 clones are more common. It was created by Berg, who got bought out by DuPont, who spun those off to FCI and then that went to Amphenol decades ago. Then Harwin made their M20 connectors as a near clone of Mini-PV, but they aren’t a perfect fit with Mini-PV housings (and vice versa). M20 won’t fit in a Mini-PV housing, and Mini-PV will be loose in an M20 housing. Then tons of other manufacturers started cloning M20. Most cheap leads you get will be M20.

I tend to just make my own M20 jumpers since that lets me set the length. Mini-PV is necessary if you want more options for wire gauge or spring tension though.

Eufalconimorph, 1 year ago

Just about any soldering iron should work. Chisel tips are better than round tips for most work. I really like J tips as well, they’ve got a range of usable surface sizes without having to change tip just by turning the iron around.

Put a piece of heat shrink tubing on one wire.
Strip the ends, and form a Western Union splice in the wires to hold them.
Set the iron to 350°C, and let it heat up. If your iron doesn’t have temperature control, it’s cheap crap and should probably just be thrown in the trash since it’ll tend to over-heat and lift pads when soldering PCBs. Continue for now, that doesn’t matter as much for soldering wires.
Then apply a tiny bit of solder to the tip of the iron so that it can make good contact, apply flux to the bit where the wires join (do NOT skip flux), touch the solder to the wires, and then touch the iron to the other side of the wires. The solder should quickly melt & flow into the joint.
Remove the solder, then remove the iron.
Let the joint cool, then slide the heat shrink up over the joint and shrink it with a heat gun.

Crimp connectors tend to be stronger and more vibration-proof than solder, but sometimes space constraints mean that soldered splices are necessary. Also crimpers are expensive, for many wire-to-wire crimp families the official crimpers are several hundred dollars.

Eufalconimorph, 1 year ago

The SensePeek PCBite system is really nice. They're the best board holders I've ever used, very stable. Great for testing, and great for soldering. The probes are ridiculously helpful, it's downright easy to probe adjacent pins on a 0.5mm pitch QFP (with some magnification)! All rather expensive, but very, very worth it for the time saved.

Eufalconimorph, 1 year ago

It’s dielectric (non-conductive) not dialectic (talking).