Are you using Rugged, Miniaturized Connectors in your Electronic Designs?

I pick yes

vijeth_ds Yes, why?

Might be a bit of a noob question here, but what do mean by "specifying"?

I do if necessary. Surprisingly perhaps, the small latching waterproof connectors used on cars these days are very good. I don't know where you get them from though. They make a nice change from bullet-and-tube and/or spade terminal types. I havn't seen a crimping tool for them...

Ah, I see that the title has been changed from "Are you specifying" to "Are you using", which indeed makes more sense to me.

google

molex pin, mini din, aviation, connectors

aliexpress

magnetic, aviation,  din, dt waterproof, mini xlr, xlr aviation

I have used the magnetic, mini xlr aviation and din, there is also a din type that has threaded ends not sure the name its on alixpress

Having a small machine shop I have  also rolled my own using the guts of other connectors. 

have fun

It's what a designer does somewhere within the process - he or she tells the assembly teams what to use in order to make what has been designed, sometimes the colour of the finished product, etc. the resulting document is called a 'Specification', usually abbreviated to 'Spec'.

There are lots of different specs for a device, they might include parameters associated with vibration testing, tests at high and low temperatures, ingress ratings, and of course the final Test Specification that might be witnessed by a representative of the customers' company. I remember being part of the crew who were testing a large electric motor - we'd hired a wicked piece of kit that generated a suitable power supply and then added all sorts of problems such as phase errors, dodgy sine-waves, sudden loss and sudden re-application of power, etc. When our motor stopped all by itself we expected the worst - but it was even worse than that. On close inspection we found that the cause was the test generator blowing up!

electronicbiker said:

Surprisingly perhaps, the small latching waterproof connectors used on cars these days are very good.

 electronicbiker Are you referring to the Bosch connectors?

Circular connectors are traditionally quite popular for ruggedized uses. I used to encounter a lot of these at one workplace; aluminium construction, and about as rugged as possible. Strong lock. Can be kicked, driven over, thrown off a building attached to equipment and the connection still won't break. But not miniaturized really, although the number of circuits could be quite large.

Also we also used these (and I'm currently messing about with some equipment that has one of these); it's a Lemo connector. Extremely miniature, and still quite rugged. Dead easy to plug/unplug even when wearing gloves, and yet will latch strongly and won't accidentally disconnect). Which kind of hints towards the sort of applications they get put to. But price is extremely steep (a handful of these will cost the same as a top-end iPhone). For applications where the only things that matter are reliability and size.

At a more normal price! M8 and M12 connectors are kind of semi-rugged (but not anywhere near the ruggedness of the connectors above). But good enough for railway use (for example):

Image sources: Google images.

I've encountered  the Lemo style for both power and microphones in broadcast equipment.

Lots of similar looking expensive stuff out there. I've encountered the Fischer type in automotive

Have you had any experience with M12 for Gbit Ethernet use ? I'm currently looking for an alternative to RJ45 for digital AV type applications. Criteria is for a more rugged connector (to prevent randoms from damaging them with their badly crimped plugs) and also for a different form factor to clearly differentiate them from a corporate LAN data point.