Thanks Brijac ;-) ... And, on a slightly different level ... I did not know about Viborg connectors until you mentioned them earlier in this thread - but Viborg is a middle sized (by Danish standards) Danish city so I thought they could be Danish. But no .. searching the internet for confirmation on this they appear to be very Chinese (located in Shenzhen as far as I can see). But anyway - thanks for your tip on this!
Jesper
Jesper
"The product design concept comes from Denmark’s Viborg." what their about page says about them. Very high quality manufacturer, been using them for many many years.
A note about quality (not SQ)
Many moons ago I worked in a company where we had designs based on the T9000 "Transputer" a relatively large SMD quad pack communication processor, gold plated - and yes, that was nickel on copper as the base layers.
They had a rather bad habit of failing in the field. As the nickel cracked. (these products were moved around, on top of the inherent thermal stress).
Luckily they were not that hard to repair, all it took was a big flat blade screw-driver against the side of the chip, giving it a sharp whack, and it would jump clean off the board.
Gold plating is great for pcb's with a (risk of) long shelf life or where the exposed surface is part of an edge/test-connector.
It of course also looks cool.... not to be underestimated in the jewelry and audio business
The anti corrosive surface properties are otherwise pointless as all the parts you mount will not have gold plated legs - so we want to stay clear of that risk, sealing or coating. Which then opens up another can or two of worms.
If you want good gas-tight connections go with silver.
Many moons ago I worked in a company where we had designs based on the T9000 "Transputer" a relatively large SMD quad pack communication processor, gold plated - and yes, that was nickel on copper as the base layers.
They had a rather bad habit of failing in the field. As the nickel cracked. (these products were moved around, on top of the inherent thermal stress).
Luckily they were not that hard to repair, all it took was a big flat blade screw-driver against the side of the chip, giving it a sharp whack, and it would jump clean off the board.
Gold plating is great for pcb's with a (risk of) long shelf life or where the exposed surface is part of an edge/test-connector.
It of course also looks cool.... not to be underestimated in the jewelry and audio business
The anti corrosive surface properties are otherwise pointless as all the parts you mount will not have gold plated legs - so we want to stay clear of that risk, sealing or coating. Which then opens up another can or two of worms.
If you want good gas-tight connections go with silver.
Probably poor control on the nickel plating thickness. Too thick means easily cracked.
As for gas-tight connections, you can get them with almost any sort of interface, as long as the materials do not significantly creep and that the connector design allows for enough contact pressure and elasticity/springiness (to maintain that contact pressure over time). IDC, screws, springs, etc. all can work very well.
Absolutely - it all depends on the application.
If you have an ammonium vapor environment the silver will be a bad choice.
If you are facing fretting corrosion issues freedom to move without shifitng the contact point becomes a focus.....And so on.
Just want to highlight that gold plating is not some magic bullet for everything. Solderability and wetting is also not great compared to alternatives - when we are talking new boards.
Long term storage, unprotected storage, non vacuum packed? For sure the best solution.
We are back in the 60's 70's 🙂 I wonder how many boards were actually gold plated back then?
Better term is dissolve. It makes it easier to solder the component into after dissolving the gold plating layer. I have no beef with enig for our purposes, though i see no real need, but if it ends up cheaper to produce (and it is in 2oz pcbs on jlcpcb) i go for it.
You can easily find out if a nickel gold finish bothers you. Virtually all connectors (pin headers, RCA, XLR, ...) which are gold plated (flash or thicker) are actually with nickel underplating (most often not stated in the datasheets). The tin plated versions too by the way, only connectors which are pure/hot-dipped tinned are without an underplating. Very very few come without nickel underplating. These usually use copper or palladium instead. If they do it is stated in the datasheet. Gold plated RCA and XLR connectors use hard gold - not pure gold - which is a gold nickel alloy. If you want a corrosion resistant connector, which last thousand of mating cycles this is the way to go.
To do the test: get yourself a pin header and a neodymium magnet. You will find that it is slightly magnetic. You probably cannot lift it, but you should be able to move or swivel it slightly. Make a jumper bridge from it and compare it to a copper wire. Report your results 🙂
To do the test: get yourself a pin header and a neodymium magnet. You will find that it is slightly magnetic. You probably cannot lift it, but you should be able to move or swivel it slightly. Make a jumper bridge from it and compare it to a copper wire. Report your results 🙂
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