With industrial market sector sales flat in 2014, it’s not surprising that sales across the sector tumbled in the first quarter of 2015.   Bishop tracks 12 companies in the industrial market sector. These companies’ combined sales contracted year over year in the last three quarters ending with 1Q15. In 2013, these companies grew 0.1%Read More

The process of choosing the right electrical connector isn’t always black and white, and here Remke examines one of the most important connector decisions: Should you go with a stock connector or a custom option?   The process of choosing the right electrical connector for your application isn’t black and white, and neither are theRead More

Cable splices are a necessary evil in designing and installing a communications network, particularly in an industrial setting, so let’s take a look at safe fiber optic splicing techniques.     In a perfect world, a fiber optic installation would consist of long, continuous cable runs from one destination to another. However, in the realRead More

Installing fiber optic networks in harsh environments, such as on the factory floor, requires special considerations. Here, Berk-Tek explains how to specify water-resistant fiber optic cable for demanding applications.   Fiber optic cables have become an integral part of applications such as data centers, local area networks, telecom networks, industrial Ethernet, and wireless. Each applicationRead More

How do pre-terminated optical fiber and category-rated copper cabling stack up against field-terminated versions? Leviton shares five things to know about pre-terminated cabling and network deployment.   Pre-terminated cable provides a plug-and-play solution for links between switches, servers, patch panels, and zone distribution areas in the data center. These solutions include a variety of trunkRead More

The end of Moore’s Law will occur in the 2020s, but we can already see evidence of and fallout from the imminent event. The $400B semiconductor market is approaching the end of Moore’s Law as we have known it. This will occur around the middle of the 2020s because feature sizes will become too small for existingRead More

The awards pile up along with acquisitions, partnerships, and promotions in the news briefs for June 9, 2015.   Molex Incorporated announced the acquisition of ProTek Medical Ltd. by Molex Ireland Holdings B.V. Headquartered in Sligo, Ireland, ProTek Medical Ltd. specializes in supplying custom solutions for medical device manufacturers in the global medical industry. ItRead More

To meet the need for higher-speed data collection, transmission, and storage, circular connectors are downsizing to serve changes in instrument and product designs. Omnetics’ Bob Stanton traces the evolution of circular connectors, and forecasts future developments in high-speed systems.   Today’s electronic circuitry is changing rapidly to meet our demand for higher-speed data collection, transmission, andRead More

According to Bishop & Associates’ research, the fourth largest connector market will exhibit strong growth over the next five years.   The circular connector market is the fourth largest product market by share of the total worldwide connector market following PCB, application-specific, and rectangular I/O connectors. This share has been relatively stable over the last fiveRead More

When choosing modern hyperboloid contacts for circular I/O connectors, the specific requirements of the application are key considerations.   Circular connectors are ubiquitous in medical electronics, instrumentation, and military and aerospace equipment. The round configuration lends itself to input/output applications that see frequent mating and un-mating. Plug and receptacle alignment is intuitive to enhance ease of use.Read More

With even the most common applications constantly evolving, specialized connector designs are required on a regular basis. Here, AMETEK explains the process of how to specify custom circular connectors.   Considering the connector industry’s global sales of more than $50 billion, you would be excused for thinking that a connector design exists for every conceivable application. However, the competitive nature of theRead More

There are several options for testing cable assemblies, and CAMI Research makes the case for feature-rich, cost-efficient PC-based cable and harness test systems. Q: What are the available options for wire and harness testing and how do they compare? There are three categories of test systems on the market: PC-based (external control), microprocessor-controlled, and embeddedRead More