I like end-of-the-year top 10 lists. I just read the top 10 movies of 2018 (at the box office) and five of them were Marvel movies. Retrievers are the perenniel #1 most popular breed of dog. As a volleyball junkie here’s my top VB play of the year (although I am a bit biased, Kenzie (the player who makes this remarkable save) played club ball with my daughter).
We had record blog readership this year; “Connectors 101” and DesignCon were the most popular topics, but the topics are varied. Here are Samtec’s ten most popular connector blogs for 2018.
Dissimilar Metals And The Risk of Galvanic Corrosion in Mating Connectors: When choosing connectors for your application, it is important to choose mating connectors with similar plating materials in the contact areas. Dissimilar metals in the contact areas (i.e. gold mating with tin) can result in galvanic corrosion. Galvanic corrosion is an electrochemical process in which one metal corrodes preferentially to another when both metals are in electrical contact, in the presence of an electrolyte.
Guidelines For Paste-In-Hole Reflow Processing: Many Samtec customers employ Paste-In-Hole (PIH) processing. Very simply put, this is the process of screening solder paste into and around plated through-holes on a pcb, and placing the leads of through-hole components — like connectors — in these prepared through-holes. The boards are run through a reflow soldering process, thus terminating both through-hole and SMT components in one reflow process.
What Plating Option Is Best For My Connector? I can’t speak for all connector companies when it comes to costs, but pins and plating are usually the main cost drivers in board-to-board connector systems. Choosing the right plating is critical to the success of a connector system. Plating affects the connector’s performance, life cycle, quality, and cost.
Why Is Samtec’s Tiger A Mascot? Ever wonder why Samtec’s company mascot is a tiger? There’s a story behind how we selected a tiger for our mascot, and here’s the story.
DesignCon 2018 Parting Thoughts – How Real Is 112 Gbps PAM4? One question that was on the minds of many at DesignCon 2018 was, “How real is 112 Gbps PAM4?” The number of demos and presentations at the show appears to have answered the question.
Connector Voltage and Power Rating 101 Samtec Associate Dave Scopelliti prepared an excellent document with the goal of taking the confusion out of voltage and power ratings in specifications and in product information publications.
TI and Samtec Demo 56 Gpbs PAM4 Over Backplane At DesignCon 2018 This blog is a video summary from DesignCon 2018, where TI and Samtec partnered on a 56Gbps PAM4 backplane product demonstration in the TI booth. The demo combined TI’s next-gen 56Gbps PAM4 Linear Repeater with Samtec’s ExaMAX(R) high-speed backplane connector system.
Samtec Acquires PCI Samtec acquired the assets and going-forward business relationship of Precision Connector, Inc., or PCI. PCI specializes in design and manufacture of precision RF and microwave coaxial connectors and brings over 25 years of design experience in the RF/Microwave industry to the Samtec team. This strengthens our engineering support and improves our product offering of precision interconnects, like 3.50 mm, 2.92 mm, SMP, 2.40 mm, 1.85 mm, SMPM, and 1.00 mm.
Another Top 10 List: Samtec’s Most Popular Product Lines In 2017 This is cool. A top 10 list made the top 10 list. This blog is a list of the Top 10 most popular Samtec products and product families in 2017.
Comparing Base Metals In Connectors For most Samtec connectors the bigger ticket cost items are the pins and the plating. Selecting the right pin and plating significantly impacts the cost of the connector system. This blog gives a quick overview of three different base metals Samtec uses in its terminal pins and sockets.
And if you still feel like reading, here are the honorable mentions for 2018:
