The design of printed circuit board connectors is typically based on the best possible balance between technical and economic requirements. From a technical standpoint, factors such as the mechanical strength of the connection, the specific operating conditions, and the exact transmission performance requirements must be taken into account. From an economic perspective, the question arises as to how high the product’s quality truly needs to be, given the purpose and duration of the application.

Particularly for high-quality and technically sophisticated products, the customer’s specification of gold-plated contact surfaces for the connector is often a matter of course. In fact, gold is the only material that optimally combines all the properties that define the quality of a connector: Gold is resistant to corrosion and withstands even the harshest environmental conditions; it shows virtually no material fatigue even after a large number of mating cycles; and it ensures optimal transmission of current and voltage even at temperatures of up to 150 degrees Celsius. A traditional and, depending on the application, more cost-effective alternative is a silver coating, which actually outperforms gold in terms of electrical conductivity. However, the significantly higher contact normal force (contact normal force) can lead to undesirable limitations in the design of the connector in certain cases.

Through continuous optimization of the production process, an in-house reel-to-reel plating facility not only allows for a high degree of flexibility regarding the type of contacts to be processed; it also enables the cost-effective production of custom contact surfaces. As for the use of gold, a connector manufacturer with its own Inhouse-electroplating facility can reduce the use of this valuable precious metal to an absolute minimum by, for example, plating contacts on blade and Female strips only selectively and directly at the point of actual current and voltage transfer. Furthermore, having an in-house electroplating facility offers connector manufacturers the advantage of being able to produce a wide variety of other material combinations, such as nickel, tin, tin/lead, nickel/phosphorus, and palladium.
To achieve an optimal cost-benefit ratio and ensure maximum flexibility regarding the concontact surface and the coatings to be configured, it is advisable to choose a connector manufacturer with its own electroplating facility. As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of PCB connectors, ept GmbH operates six in-house continuous-flow electroplating lines at two German locations and enables the production of coatings from up to 10 different surface combinations with minimal modification effort.

 The customer- and application-specific configuration of PCB connectors is not limited to the surface but encompasses the entire structure of a contact, including the base material (base material) and the intermediate layer (underplate). Based on the respective technical and economic requirements, specially developed processes enable the manufacture of highly customized products, the quality of which is verified through ongoing testing in our own laboratories. In this way, operation in accordance with specifications is tested under conditions that far exceed the relevant standards. One example is the requirements of DIN 41612 connector, according to which the quality of a product must be fully guaranteed even after 500 (performance level 1) or 400 (performance level 2) mating cycles.