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Custom Board to Board Connectors
GCT specialise in custom connectors allowing you to meet specific application and design requirements and budgets. Our mechanical & electrical engineers have many years of experience assisting in design and development of custom built connectors that, we not only helped our customers addressing their design and application challenges, but also saving much of their money. Whether it's a modification of an existing part or a brand new design, we will assist you all the way.
Learn more about how we had helped our customers to meet their specific design challenges for board to board connectors by reading our case studies, or contact our engineers for solutions by sending your case to us.
Header Insulator Colour Options
Application challenge: Green Insulator required on 2.00mm SMT PCB header.
GCT solution: We offer a variety of PCB header insulator colours. Blue, red, green and yellow for both thru hole and surface mount headers in 2.00mm and 2.54mm pitches. MOQ's apply.
Pin Header with Staggered Pitch and Different Pitch Between Rows
Application challenge: A customer required an dual in line 0.8mm pitch pin header with staggered rows and a different pitch between the pins. A chamfered insulator edge was required to identify orientation.
GCT solution: We tooled a new 54 position pin header insulator with a 0.8mm (between pins) and 1.42mm (between rows) with staggered pins between header rows and missing pins.
Header with supporting feet
Application challenge: A customer required a customised stacking header with an extended height but tiny footprint to stack two PCB's in parallel orientation.
GCT solution: We molded a custom insulator and produced a PCB header with supporting feet. The feet were designed strategically to work around existing components on a PCB to avoid the customer re-designing the PCB. Read the full story here
Pin Header Connector with Variable Pin Length for Make First/Break Last Application
Application challenge: a customer requires the daughter card to be grounded before the power and the signal contacts are engaged.
GCT solution: we modified our standard 18-pin elevated header, populating the grounding pins with longer pins, such that when the daughter is being inserted, the longer pins touch and ground the daughter card before the power & signal contacts are engaged. This is known as ‘make first/break last'. Customers may also use pin headers with selective longer leads in applications where a longer signal pin alerts a system that a mating connection is about to happen.
Double Ended SMT Header Connects Two Co-planar PCB's
Application challenge: a customer sought a low cost solution with tiny PCB real estate. PCB's mate in a planar fashion, however sit at different levels.
GCT solution: GCT offered a 1.00mm pitch tiny pin header designed to be surface mounted at both ends, this offered a low cost one piece solution as no mating PCB sockets were required. Issue of different height PCB's was overcome by customer loading PCB's into a holder before cponent pick and place and reflow soldering. Contact GCT for more information.
Custom Bending of Pins for Limited Space Constraints
Application challenge: a customer requires a board mount header to mate with a ribbon cable assembly. Due to the nature of the enclosure and the on-board components location, neither a horizontal or a vertical pin out will work.
GCT solution: we created a custom header by bending the pins 45 degrees relative to the circuit board, which satisfied customer's space constraints.
Custom Plating for Harsh Conditions
Application challenge: a customer requires a standard header for an application where vibration & harsh environmental conditions are presented.
GCT solution: we suggested to plate the contact terminals with 50 micron inches gold to help the connector to withstand the harsh conditions.
Mixed mounting configuration
Application challenge: a customer requires a surface mount socket, but also requires signal paths to the mezzanine card below.
GCT solution: a three row insulator was populated with SMT pins in the outer row, then longer, self-nesting style through hole pins were loaded into the centre row. The circuit board then was processed with intrusive reflow. The resulting centre row contacts were then mated with a socket connector on the mezzanine card.
Voided Header Pins and Blanked Socket Cavities
Application challenge: connector mating polarisation required, not enough space to use a 'boxed' pin header.
GCT solution: GCT offered a pin header with missing pins, and a socket with voided cavities, which allow the combination of header and socket to be plugged together in the correct orientation only. This solution has a modest tooling fee and offers a low cost component solution. Customers could also use this to remove pins for use in high current/voltage applications. The blanked holes on PCB sockets may be either filled with a peg or by mold amendment, the approach depends on customer preference, project volume and life. Contact GCT for more information.
Kinked Header Pins
Application challenge: Pin Headers Falling Out of PCB Before Processing
GCT solution: GCT offered a header with kinked pins, this is a perfect solution to hold pin headers in place pre soldering. Particularly useful when using tall components and/or in wave soldering process which may cause the connector to move before soldering takes place.
Custom pin header selective plating
Application challenge: Customer sought 50µ” thick gold plating to withstand a harsh environment.
GCT solution: GCT standard thickest plating is 30µ”. Using a selective plating technique we offered a pin header with heavy gold plating of 50µ” in the contact area and tin in the solder area, this approach kept costs reasonable and offered improved solderability, while offering the thicker gold in contact area as required.
Header with Three Insulators, U Shaped Pins with Different Lengths
Application challenge: a customer has difficulty accessing the PCB during assembly.
GCT solution: GCT offered a header with U shaped pins and three nylon insulator blocks. The headers are used to aid assembly in a difficult to access location. They are designed to polarize correctly and prevent mismating. Contact GCT for more information.
Round Pin Connectors
Application challenge: Customer was seeking a pin header which could handle a higher current rating, Standard 2.54mm pitch pin headers are rated at 3A per circuit, customer was seeking 6A per circuit plugging to turned pin socket contacts. The customer was looking for longer pin, 12.66mm in the mating area.
GCT solution: GCT developed a 3.00mm pitch dual row pin header with ø1.00mm round pins with 12.66mm length. Using round pins allows more of the header contact to touch the PCB, thus allowing a high current rating.
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