RE: Seeking a source for 3.5mm Pitch Through Hole PCB Boards

DAB — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 18:46:56 GMT

Time to dig out the old drill press.

RE: Seeking a source for 3.5mm Pitch Through Hole PCB Boards

shabaz — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 18:42:34 GMT

Hi Randall,

Normal 0.1" pitch boards work for t3.5mm pitch connectors, for up to (about) 4 pins, if inserted diagonally. 5 or 6 pin are sometimes feasible (if the pins are thin enough), but it's a tight fit at 6 pins as shown in the photo below.

(Connectors with no pegs: 3.5 mm pitch on 2.54 mm pitch (0.1") board:

However the Omron connectors have pegs that won't fit, they are off the grid. But, Omron offer KiCAD footprints, so it would be easy to build a custom PCB for this, that could be orderable from any PCB manufacturer. This is an example footprint for the Omron 4-pin single-row version of that connector family:

I created a video to get up-to-speed with KiCAD quickly, here: https://youtu.be/5Be7XOMmPQE

If you wanted to have a board with (say) footprints for a range of these connectors, one suggestion could be to have a board design with the connector footprints on the left side, and normal 0.1" pitch layout on the right side. It's a simple board, that could be done in an hour - I'd be happy to do that if you need it. Here is an example of how that could look (I did this with 3.81mm pitch connector):

If you know which sizes of connectors you need (e.g. just the single row, or also the double row variants), then if you want, I can design a little PCB for them similar to that shown above, then you could order them from a PCB manufacturer to be sent to you. If you want to learn KiCad, then that video is a good a start as any other hopefully, but will take an amount of time (not too long, but it would take a day or two) to get up to speed.

RE: Seeking a source for 3.5mm Pitch Through Hole PCB Boards

scottiebabe — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 16:25:14 GMT

The diagonal spacing on 100 though proto boards is 3.6mm which might be close enough for a small pin count connector.

RE: Seeking a source for 3.5mm Pitch Through Hole PCB Boards

Fred27 — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 16:23:28 GMT

I think this might be an opportunity to learn KiCad and order some PCBs from China. [emoticon:4191f5ee34e248a29fa0dbe8d975f74a]