Board-to-board connectors boast floating contacts

Samples are in stock at authorised distributor Anglia Components.

Hirose says its FunctionMAX connectors redefine board-to-board connections.

Featuring a floating contact design, these connectors excel in handling high transmission speeds crucial in industrial applications. As the name "FunctionMAX" implies, this product family has been designed with a mission to meet all the needs of the industrial market with maximum functionality.

The floating design of the FunctionMAX family offers a degree of "play" between the contacts during the mating operation, this allows the connector to absorb alignment errors caused by tolerances in the PCB layout or assembly process.

The illustration shows the spring portion of the terminal absorbs stress from alignment errors, this reduces the stress applied to the mounted parts enhancing reliability and preventing solder cracking.

Traditional rigid board-to-board connectors without floating design mean PCBs must be aligned perfectly with each other to ensure reliable mating, any misalignment creates stress on the connector which can lead to solder joint failures or open circuit connections.

Another benefit of the floating design is realised when multiple connectors are used on a PCB or the boards are fixed to an external chassis.

In this case it is very difficult to control the various tolerances of the PCBs and chassis to get each connector perfectly aligned with its mating half, the floating design allows for much wider tolerances making the PCB design and assembly easier.

Hiroseʼs connectors have been developed to meet high-speed communication needs with their solid performance and design for such fields as telecommunications, automotive, factory automation and medical devices.

Return loss (reflection) is reduced by impedance matching, including the floating portion, based on the pitch of the terminals, signal contact width, distance from the ground terminal, and dielectric constant of the insulation material.

Insertion loss (attenuation) is carefully controlled by taking into consideration the pitch of the terminals, the width and thickness of the signal contact, the dielectric loss tangent of insulation materials, and other factors to optimize the design, including the floating portion, this helps minimize resonance and ensures that the insertion loss is proportional to the frequency.

And finally cross talk (leakage) is reduced by optimising the terminal and ground pin assignment between the differential pairs according to the terminal pitch and transmission rate, this minimizes resonance and crosstalk.

Comprising of 11 series the FunctionMAX family of board-to-board connectors includes both a floating design and high-speed transmission capabilities and are offered in pitches from 0.4mm to 7.62mm making them suitable for a wide range of applications.