PC board connector plugs

[cteno4]

Here are the little plugs I was talking about you can make from the inexpensive PC board headers (connectors).

 

These come in 40 pin units normally. They are used to connect small PC boards together and to ribbon cables. The handy ones to use to make little micro plugs are the round pin type (as opposed to the square pin style). The pin spacing is 2.54mm (1/10"). They can be easily snipped into any number of connector you need. Wires can be easily soldered to the the leads and the insulated with a bit of heat shrink. The male units are usually 2-4x the price of the female units for some odd reason, but there is a trick to get around this -- you can pop two female pieces together by putting the lead end of one into the female socket of the other. By doing this you can make a pair of 2 conductor plugs for as little as 3 cents! You can pick up the female 40 round pin header for as little as 20 cents each shipped on ebay, Male 40 round pin header for as little as 50 cents each.

 

The female female plugs are a little looser to the male female plugs, but decent hold. If you need to to take some tugging just put a small bit of tape across the connected plugs.

 

Great way to attach wires onto a small proto PC board where you want to be able to unplug your wires from it. Pretty small in size at about 5mm X 2mm for a 2 conductor plug.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

Edited March 13, 2016 by cteno4

[railsquid]

Aha, I see what you  mean now, thanks. Those little plugs would certainly come in handy for wiring up the lamppost, have to see if I can get hold of some.

[kvp]

And the square ended types are great for tomix connectors. (turnouts, feeds, etc.)