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mSATA PCIe connector

This product is in it's twelfth year, so long-term is here, now. The board s are integrated into chassis which is where they sheered off the tall caps , so no, I don't think they are any less ham-fisted.

The alignment pins are not soldered. But the hole to pin clearance is not large and the surface mount pins are long enough to yield a bit, so the ali gnment pins take the brunt of any sideways stress.

The mating connector on the test fixture does have soldered pins. That con nector has seen many thousands of uses.

I have trouble with the power cords on laptops. The connectors protrude fa r too much and act as a lever arm allowing damage to the mating connector w hen the laptop is actually used in the lap or in bed. The connector is not SM rather mounted to the case, but the connector itself breaks so that the mating connector no longer is held securely. When I fix this one I think I'm going to run a wire out the back and let it be a captive cable with the connector on the end.

Sure, but the "if you can" is a big issue. There was literally no way I co uld have built my current board if the connector used both sides of the PWB . It was barely possible with SMT.

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Ricky C
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I wouldn't play that card. I think the attached cable case would be less s tress with a much shorter lever arm. I've seen 44 pin connectors ripped of f a main board from multiple attach cycles. Eventually the solder just get s tired and cracks from the repeated stress. It depends on the number of c ycles more I think. 10 or maybe 100 is ok. 1000 is clearly asking for tro uble.

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Ricky C

Oh, how I long to have 'careful' users! :)

We have one device with a Hirose 40-pin mezzanine connector we're just now building daughterboards for. I suspect you're right, but I still wonder about lateral movement as the dboard slips and sticks under mounting bolts, and vibrates on standoffs.

We have another unit with a number of 2-pin SMT headers sandwiched between main- and daughterboard. Even bolted together at all corners, those 2-pin headers are the most common failure point(s) as vibration & shock pull and tear at the pads.

If we're lucky, the solder joint gives way before the traces do...

RD

Reply to
Randy Day

What sort of environment are your boards used in if they are getting vibrated broken with four mounting screws?

I find it hard to picture traces being lifted in this situation.

--

  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Ricky C

Another kind of surface-mount connector is the zebra-strip; if you can clean the contact area, and if the strips are replaceable, expendable units, one would expect good reliability in high-density connections. It's certainly inexpensive in the parts-count sense.

Reply to
whit3rd
[snip]

Geophysical equipment. Shipped on an aircraft, tossed in a pickup, washboarded over gravel roads, loaded on a float plane, dragged through the bush, falls off a rock face, chewed on by bears, that sort of thing.

Winter/summer, subarctic to desert. And no, I'm not kidding about the bears...

Crews at the end of a weeks-long survey are not inclined to be dainty with this stuff, either.

The equipment works very well, but it's a rare project that comes back without some amount of breakage.

The way I see it, if a damaging force (e.g. bear's tooth) hits a through-hole connector, the body will probably break free from the board. If the connector is SMT, it's taking traces with it...

RD

Reply to
Randy Day
[snip]

I've seen them used in cheap chinese multimeters. They seem to work well enough. I could see them being a bit more tolerant of board shifting than a hard plastic interconnect.

RD

Reply to
Randy Day

Oh, I see, you are playing the Grizzly Ben card. Ok, you win. No surface mount for you... and your bears should see a dentist regularly.

--

  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Ricky C

I like the way you refer to using your equipment as a chew toy for Grizzly bears as "board shifting". That's a bit like referring to using C4 as a "motivational tool".

--

  Rick C. 

  -++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  -++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
Reply to
Ricky C

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