Spring-Contact Technology in Circular Connectors
Today’s complex operating environments require connectors to offer higher density in a smaller footprint while being more rugged, robust, reliable, and lighter weight. Spring-enabled connector technology offers an array of options to conquer these obstacles.
Smiths Connectors’ SnapTac circular connector
Circular connectors are crucial to the successful performance of electrical devices across a variety of industries. These small, seemingly minor elements play an enormous role in the overall equation and are the technology at the heart of a system’s electrical execution. Circular connectors are paramount for ensuring and maintaining required signal integrity and reliable data transfer, which are often critical in application spaces within the medical, aerospace, and defense markets. They are also vital in industrial applications such as rail and oil and gas environments, as they must be able to perform in operating conditions that are often harsh in nature with extreme temperatures and severe shock, vibration, and corrosives.
A vexing problem confronting design engineers today is making the right choice when selecting the most appropriate circular connectors that will adequately support the power and data transfer functions associated with high-density applications across multiple industry disciplines. Today’s vast array of applications presents a diverse set of challenges for both design and test engineers. A trend driving the industry today is the requirement for much higher density, smaller pitches, and, as noted, reliable signal integrity. Across applications and industries the increasing requirements being levied upon connector technology have become broader and more demanding in scope in just the last few years alone. Today’s more complex climate requires connectors to accommodate higher density in a smaller footprint while being more rugged, robust, reliable, and lighter weight than historically possible. This has provided a daunting challenge for manufacturers to overcome.
Spring-enabled connector technology presents engineers with an array of options to conquer these obstacles. One such solution combines the high-reliability features of hyperboloid technology with the mechanical benefits of a spring-loaded contact, which results in a connector with excellent signal integrity, reliability, increased density capabilities, and proven parametric stability over time. This patented arrangement provides a compressible contact that ensures very low and stable contact resistance, high current-carrying capability, and extremely low-wear mechanisms; the design allows for extended operation over time to be realized within a sealed-while-unmated