Gents,
Ran into a wee snag during a design. The metal enclosure is plain steel that is powder-coated. The guys at the metal shop said that they cannot provide a nice connection surface for a bulkhead connector like this:
I was hoping they could provide a masked nickel-plated area but ... nope. They can only provide a threaded stud like those safety ground ones. Not so cool at several GHz. Ok, we could make a wide shunt strip for that but that's yet another custom BOM item. Corrosion is also a major concern here since this gets deployed in coastal regions. So straight bolting onto bare steel is out.
Anyone know of a clever way to handle this? If someone knows of a cheaper bulkhead SMA feedthrough connector that would also be nice. Four bucks is a bit steep.