Alternatives for Signal and Pneumatic Connectors?

[nuclearnerd]

Our team had a heck of a time with push-in pneumatic fittings and dupont 0.1" pwm connectors coming loose this year. We're looking for more robust solutions in 2017.

For Pneumatic fittings, we're considering using barbed fittings, similar to these https://www.mcmaster.com/#barbed-fittings/=151woyg, instead of push-to-connect fittings. Barbed fittings will be a pain to remove, but at least they shouldn't come off unintentionally. I don't know why we had more problems with the p-t-c fittings than other teams (it's not because we mixed 1/4" with 6mm I know), but at least we weren't the only ones: https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...hreadid=152305

For signal wire, the PWM connectors are a PITA to crimp, but the bigger problem was that they had a tendency to work their way out of the roborio headers. Next year we're considering having a printed circuit board made which would adapt the roborio header pins into a more robust connector, perhaps wago, screw terminals, or an RJ11 jack.

We had great success with Anderson connectors for power wiring, and will continue using them in 2017.

Has anyone here played with other pneumatic and signal connectors? Can you share any OpEx (Nuclear industry term, short for "Operational Experience") with us?