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Connector materials

Author:danny / time:2018-11-27 / The number of clicks:1013

Before introducing the upstream market of connector manufacturers, I shall review with you some basics of connectors. Connectors are the things we use to connect any electronics and the power supply and their components. In general, it includes materials related to it such as plug of wire, etc. So, what is the advantage of the connector? Connectors can be used to substitute for plug-in programs and connect the electronics with its circuit or system. It’s also the bridge between signals, so the quality of the connector has a big impact on the transmission of electricity quality and signal. It affects the whole industry, so it needs modularization systematization and it has to be sensitive enough.

 The materials of connector manufacturers are mostly metal, plating and plastic, etc. They are about 50% of all the costs of connector manufacturing. So connectors are also affected by the price of materials like copper and goldespecially when they’re rising. If we divide them by ratio of materials used in one connector, metal would come first, then plastics and then plating materials.

What’s the effect of these three types of materials? Metal is applied on the terminal of the connector, mostly brass and phosphor bronze which are used to produce copper alloy sheets in order to prevent hampering its transmission. Normally, we don’t use a single pure material, rather, we would use a combination of two. On the basis of strength, electricity conductivity, heat resistance, prices and so on, we would sometimes put phosphor bronze into brass when manufacturing the terminals. Of course, the percentage of phosphor bronze is lower, which means the percentage of phosphor bronze decides the quality of the product. For some products that are of a higher level, the percentage of phosphor bronze used could be up to 90%.

I believe everyone is familiar with the plating industry already. It’s a high-polluting industry for the environment, but for connector manufacturers, it’s inevitable. So a lot of factories are sourcing out their plating process to some professional plating companies.

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