SMT MMCX connectors

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Hey folks,

How reliable are SMT MMCX connectors? There seems to be a significant
retaining force with MMCX connectors. We will be using a type of FR-4
so the peel strength should be adequate.

Something like this
http://rocky.digikey.com/WebLib/Johnson Components/Web Data/135-3711-201, 135-3711-202.pdf

(Horrible link and quirly PDF file)

Anyone use these? There will not be a lot of mating/unmating going on,
just the occasional reconfiguring. I'm just visualising the whole
thing coming right off the board.

 

[John Larkin]

Hey folks,

How reliable are SMT MMCX connectors? There seems to be a significant
retaining force with MMCX connectors. We will be using a type of FR-4
so the peel strength should be adequate.

Something like this
http://rocky.digikey.com/WebLib/Johnson Components/Web Data/135-3711-201, 135-3711-202.pdf

(Horrible link and quirly PDF file)

Anyone use these? There will not be a lot of mating/unmating going on,
just the occasional reconfiguring. I'm just visualising the whole
thing coming right off the board.

Scairy. The pads will be small and MMCX's can have huge detent forces.
I'd go with something less agressive, MCX or SMB, or thru-hole if you
really need MMCX.

John

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Something like this
http://rocky.digikey.com/WebLib/Johnson Components/Web Data/135-3711-201, 135-3711-202.pdf

Anyone use these?

Not personally, but some other people around here have done so, and the
results weren't pretty: Even with a good soldering job, if you try to
disconnect a cable at anything other than normal to the SMT connector, there's
a good chance you'll rip the connector off the board (and if you do, it's
usually at least 10 minutes of dicking around to manually re-solder the
thing... assuming you didn't rip off the PCB pad in the process...). Hence,
unless you absolutely, positively can't come up with the board space for a
through-hole connector, I'd suggest avoiding them. (That's what happened
here... supposedly there wasn't enough room on the PCB for the through-hole
versions, but of course there *was* time to re-spin the board after we ripped
enough of the SMT ones off and did switch...)

We were using a mix of cables with right-angle and straight connectors on
them -- the "right-angled" cables are (not surprisingly) a little worse when
it comes to applying disconnect force off the normal and ripping off the
connector.

---Joel