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I'd strongly recommend looking into 3d printing these. You could pretty easily 3d print a plastic version of the connector itself (and shell, if male), then ad
by daeken 12y ago
I'd strongly recommend looking into 3d printing these. You could pretty easily 3d print a plastic version of the connector itself (and shell, if male), then add aluminum tape to the inside if you need EMF protection. Then you just pop in pins (which you can get at Fry's by the hundred for a couple bucks), and you have a finished connector. A few hundred dollars in setup and you're done, with a unit cost of under a dollar, all in.
- Animats 12y agoNone of the low-end 3D printers could hold the tolerances needed. Even a Form 1 isn't that precise. Connector tolerances are very tight. That's why intermittent electrical connections are mostly a thing of the past.
- daeken 12y agoI regularly print tighter tolerances with an FDM printer (modified Makerbot Replicator 2). D-sub connectors just aren't that tight; if you were printing the pins themselves, it'd be different, but the plastic side of things is not an issue at all.
- Animats 12y agoFor connectors where the pins are crimped to wires, then inserted into the connector block, the hole into which each pin fits has a complex form. It has to be shaped so that the pin clicks into place, but isn't pushed out by ordinary connector insertion forces. FDM extruders extrude a thread bigger than the tolerances required for that. Getting a longer D-sub connector and machining the plastic down is more likely to work. 3D printing isn't magic.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y agoSlight misalignment might actually improve electrical contact as long as it weren't too bad.