Digi-Key at electronica 2022 with Molex

Molex creates connections for life by enabling technologies that transform the future and improve lives. With a presence in over 40 countries, Molex offers a complete range of connectivity, services and solutions for the data communications, medical, industrial, automotive and consumer electronics industries.

Molex Quad-Row Board-to-Board connector

For years, the size of connector technology is one of the biggest challenges for engineers who want to limit the size of their device while designing wearable and embedded systems. The Quad-Row is not a new connector, and is being used in one of the highest selling smartwatches worldwide.

Now, Molex want to enable more customers to profit from its products so have turned it into a general market product. Usually, the product was sold by 20,000 units which wouldn’t necessarily work for startups or some other customers. Now, it is selling it in mini reels or as Digi-Key calls it, Digi-Reel’s, with only 500 pieces on the reel. This makes it possible to sell it to all kinds of other customers and applications.

The Quad-Row offers up to 30% space savings over conventional connector design through its design that positions pins across four rows with a signal contact pitch of 0.175mm. It has a soldering pitch of 0.35mm meaning manufacturers can assemble the connectors using standard surface-mount technology processes, meaning that as AR and VR systems gain popularity, production can scale accordingly.

Applications include smart watches, smartphones, AR/VR glasses and even medical applications.