Five Things to Know About “Naked” Connectors

By Contributed Article | July 14, 2014

Don’t blush! It’s time to get down and dirty as AVX shares five things to know about “naked” connectors.

If you’re not sure your design could benefit from a connector solution that has shed its plastic insulator, here are some considerations for utilizing “naked” connectors, according to AVX‘s Tom Anderson.

Naked connectors are single contacts that provide all of the benefits of a full connector solution without the additional component and assembly costs associated with the plastic insulator.
Contacts do not need to be enclosed in a plastic housing, even in harsh industrial environments. Exposed contacts are no different than exposed solder pads on a PCB. So, more often than not, the insulator simply adds to the total component and assembly costs and increases the footprint.
Naked connectors are based on proven contact technologies and can be trusted to replace traditional connectors. Designed from the ground up rather than from a connector down, the base material selection, plating, and key design features of these latest single-contact solutions were tested and verified with FEA software prior to extensive final product testing and qualification.
AVX’s Naked Connectors were developed to satisfy customers’ requests for cost-effective board-to-board and wire-to-board connector solutions that helped simplify the design and preserve board space while maintaining the robustness, reliability, and reparability of their existing connector solutions. Current offerings include compression contacts; lateral/coplanar contacts; pogo pin contacts; insulation displacement contacts (IDC); and poke-home contacts for horizontal, vertical, and inverse through-board WTB applications.
Industry response to AVX’s new UL-certified and award-winning Naked Connectors is exceedingly positive, as they provide customers with instant cost savings and equivalent or improved performance, in addition to board space and/or height savings. Naked connectors also enable innovative PCB layout capabilities that were previously unattainable in fixed connector solutions.

What are your thoughts on naked connectors? Have you used them in a recent design? To learn more about this technology, post a comment or question below for Tom.

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Tom Anderson, connector product manager for AVX, has been in the connector industry for more than 30 years and has held a variety of product marketing positions. For the last four years, he has focused on developing new connector technologies for the industrial and solid-state lighting markets. You can email Tom at [email protected].