Wire Connector Poll

[adam kostkowski]

Greetings! We hope that this finds you well as you prepare for the upcoming build season. Our names are Kyle Pinder, Kevin Kane, and Adam Kostkowski, and we are members of Team 4541, the Archbishop Spalding High School Cavaliers, located in Severn, MD. In addition, we are currently involved in our school’s Project Lead the Way program, and we are just beginning to formulate the design for our senior year Capstone Project. To do this, we have created a short survey to gain statistics and more knowledge about the problem that we are addressing.

You would be doing us a huge favor by taking our survey and sending it to members of your team involved in wiring and electronics. Our project idea involves a design for a wire connector that is simpler and easier to use than previous designs, and having them fill out the survey would be a big help.

The Survey: https://docs.google.com/a/spaldinghs...wd-Qc/viewform

Thank you for considering this request. We hope that this season is a blast for your team!

-Kyle Pinder, Kevin Kane, and Adam Kostkowski

P.S.- Tell the team members that you send this to to send it any other electronics/wiring involved people that they know. We need as many results as we can get!

[Foster]

So that was a pretty short set of questions.

Let me add some comments. I use those connectors for robots and they work well for things that don't get smacked around. I assumed that that was your application space. You have a question about being fragile (and I picked that), but mechanical stress is a failing, they really are not fragile.

I use them in car related things and they work well. Since they are ok without vibration / stress they work OK. There is also about a billion things that use these connectors they are pretty handy. I love the ones that have two or three male connectors on the back of the female, you can add new connections inline.

I use them on the boat (much to the horror of my boater friends). In theory they are a metal/metal air tight connection, in practice they corrode. I do some abatement by using clear shrink tubing to make the connection air/water resistant. There are also ones that come with plastic boots on them to do almost the same thing.

You have a question about cost and the lowest set point is 0.01 to $1. That's a pretty big range. Depending on what you buy (bare metal = 0.05, plastic ferrule = 0.11, boots = 0.12) the cost is pretty low. I might be willing to spend a few cents more for a better design, but $1 or more for each connector isn't going to happen.

Good luck on your project!

[otherguy]

I would agree, the price range needs finer granularity. The sub $1 range is a pretty broad stroke. We are typically getting these at around $0.10 to $0.15 cents each depending on manufacturer and quantity.

To put it into perspective, we typically use 6 connectors per motor on each robot. Its not uncommon to have approximately 10 motors per not. We typically build 2 robots. So figure at least 150 connectors per season (accounting for bad crimps and rewiring due to failed components/redesign). If each connector was $1 that'd be $150 in connectors alone, vs ~$22 for the standard spade connectors.

Even Andersen power pole connectors can be had for about $0.50 each in small quantities, and those are widely regarded as the best option. You've got to keep the price down or its a non-starter.

[DaveL]

I'm happy to fill out your survey, but a little confused as to how its being used.
What are you trying to learn?

I've surveyed users about web site usage patterns and kinda expected the survey to investigate how people used connectors, what connectors they are currently using, as well as what they liked or disliked about the connectors that they are using and their satisfaction level with those connectors.

Other things I might have expected to see on your survey include:
1. Effort to connect and disconnect
2. Reliability
3. Electrical resistance (voltage drop)
4. Weight
5. Time to install
6. Color coding options

Not only can you have users rate their current connector on this factors, but you can also have users rate which factors are the most important or define a rank order of their preferences.

Build Mentor Dave

[adam kostkowski]

Thanks so much for all your feedback! We will definitely take this into account for the next stage of our project. However, we still need more people to take the survey to meet the required amount of responses.

Thanks for your responses!

-Kyle, Kevin, Adam