PWM Pin Crimps

[gixxy]

My team has decided to just buy wire and the pin crimps to make our own PWM connectors. However I cannot find the products again. We found them on digikey, however any site or model name would come in handy.

Im looking for:
3 pin PWM connector housings
Male crimp-on PWM pins
Female crimp-on PWM pins.

Thanks for any and all Help!

[pfreivald]

We order ours from these guys -- great, fast service and at decent prices.

[DonRotolo]

DigiKey does not have what you want. Jameco does.

That being said: After many years of making our own, we went back to commercially-crimped cables. PM me if you can't guess why.

[plnyyanks]

DigiKey does have what you want, but you may or may not want to buy from there, depending on price (I haven't checked how different suppliers match up in a while). Appropriate part numbers:

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

Male connectors: WM2515-ND
Female connectors: WM2512-ND
3 connector housings: WM2801-ND
3 conductor wire: A121-500-ND (note, this is not the Red/Black/White flat wire that you're familiar with, but it'll function just the same, and I'm pretty sure it's cheaper - at least it was this time last year)

As for making your own cables, 1124 has made its own cables for as long as I can remember, and we haven't had too many quality issues. Once you get good at making them, they go by really quickly and without a hitch. It's always nice to have to-length cables made for you competition 'bot.

[gixxy]

pfreivald: Thanks this site is perfect.

DonRotolo: We had some trouble at first too, but it was mostly because we didn't have stranded wire. As soon as we got that it went great. I mean any number of things can go wrong...

Vary in housing and pin types. Bad Crimps. Solid core wire falling out. But in the end once the person knows what they are doing and you have the right parts your fine. Plus i feel if you do get a bad crimp it is easier to fix that one crimp than replace the whole cable.

plnyyanks: Yeah I think we are going to go with the site that pfreivald mentioned.

Thanks!

[jason701802]

HansenHobbies.com, the same place pfreivald recommended, is where we get all our PWM bits and pieces. Everything is great quality and I haven't found a better price. No need to buy the deluxe crimping tool or wire, we use the economy crimping tool and my crimps fails no more often than the commercial ones do.

[gixxy]

We got the crimping tool when we placed our first order with Digikey and it is great. So we are good there. Thanks. I am absolutely using this site.

[sanddrag]

The best idea is to get servo extension cables from eBay, then cut them and install only one end, with pins and housings from Hansen Hobbies. It saves you half the work.

[Phalanx]

I also will chime in with Hansen Hobbies. Good price & fast.

Like Don Rotolo stated earlier they stopped making their own as did we. For the same reasons most likely.

What we do do, however, is if we need something custom we'll make it, otherwise will use the standard off the shelf ones.

Typically we make our own for encoders, or lengths longer than 3ft, or if we deem shielded cable would be better instead of servo wire.

[agartner01]

http://www.pololu.com/catalog/category/39. Everything you'll ever need.

[JCharlton]

Originally Posted by agartner01

http://www.pololu.com/catalog/category/39. Everything you'll ever need.

Now you tell me! We went the Hansen Hobbies route and crimp all our wires. It works, if you're careful and very patient, but what a lot of work. Our electrical guy was a maestro with the tool, but few others mastered it. Many of the crimps deformed and were nigh impossible to insert. We may go this route with pre-crimped wire and inserting them into headers in the future.

Regular pwm cables are nice, but you can reduce possible errors and have a cleaner layout by making 1 x 8 or 2 x 8 cables to plug everything in at once on the analog, solenoid and digital sidecar, avoiding "one-off" errors and other troubles.