SL100: Where to get matching connectors

All sales versions of the board come with matching connector housings and contacts. In a volume OEM situation you would most likely have a wiring harness pre-made by a specialist contractor, ready to just plug onto the board and attached devices.

The large, white, single pin-row connectors on the board are commonly referred to as "KK". They are 0.156" or 3.96mm pitch. Matching female connectors are available from a number of manufacturers. They are available in two principle styles:

• Insulation Displacement Connectors (IDC). In this style the contact and plastic body come as one part, and the wire is installed with a special tool that forces points on the contact to penetrate the wire insulation and make contact with the metallic conductors. These are suitable for small volume production.
• Separate plastic housings and crimp contacts.You need to order the plastic connector housing and the metal contacts separately. The contacts come either in continuous strips for machine crimping or in singles for manual crimping. This type of connector is best suited to higher volume production.

If you use the IDC types you will also need a suitable crimping tool. Please ask your connector supplier for a suitable type. We recommend a good quality ratchet tool and proper operator training. The most common cause of connection failure is improper crimping.

Note, too, that the contacts are designed to handle a defined range of wire gauges. Take care to use the correct gauge of wire, or you will have problems.

The following table lists a number of connector manufacturers. In the housing part number ??? represents the number of poles (contact positions). Fill unused ? positions with 0's, i.e. for 4-way "???" becomes "004"

IDC types

Crimp terminal types

If you are in Australia, you can conveniently buy small quantities of connectors from Altronics Pty Ltd (Phone 1300-797-007. Altronics part numbers are P5640 plus xx, where xx is the number of ways. For example, a 10-way connector is P5650. These come with matching crimp terminals. Altronics also sell a pack of 100 crimp pins: p/n P5640.

Digikey sells the parts in the US. In Europe and many other places you can get them from Farnell. The following list gives the Farnell order codes versus number of ways:

2 ways:143-157; 3 ways:143-158; 4 ways:143-159; 5 ways:257-485; 6 ways:143-160; 8 ways:143-161; 10 ways:143-522; 12 ways:257-497 The Farnell order number for contacts is 143-193 for 100 terminals and 143-198 for 1000 terminals.