Through hole solderable pins - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: PureBasic
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 06, 2020, 11:23:15 am
content: Hello folks!During the years 2012-2014, I was using some very handy through hole pins to connect sides of homemade double sided PCB. I can't find the reference anymore. Maybe it will talk to someone here:The pins were packaged in a long green cardboard box.The pins were attached together in the form of a long snappy bar.They were looking like this when looked at sideways:https://imgur.com/a/3Ciqul2It was very very fast to implant them, way faster than rivets or wire.If anyone remembers the ref, that would be helpful. They may not be manufactured anymore.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2020, 12:07:44 pm
content: I have a bunch of clips that are made by a British company. They are solderable and are intended to allow you to make small PCBs that are held at a 90 degree angle from the board they are connected to. I forget their name but they are an old company.The smaller pcb inserts into a U-shaped clip in the end of the clip. They snap together side to side.

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2020, 08:03:23 pm
content: I just dug up mine. I threw away the green box a long time ago and keep them in a giant air-tight preform/testtube. But I had the foresight to print out a label for the part number.Unfortunately, the company lists them as obsolete and no longer available. But maybe this will help you complete your search, faster, whether successful or not.Apparently, all the cool kids use copper rivets for this.PCB track pinsHarwin T1559-46

author: SMTech
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2020, 08:29:11 pm
content: Well even if you can't find the exact ones there are buckets of other PCB pins you can choose from that would get the job done, although perhaps not in a nice handy strip.

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2020, 08:55:04 pm
content: ^The strip is the main reason to use these, though. The last couple of the strip, you can't hold onto anymore, and you just throw away. The pins also have a bit of a taper. When you use exactly the right drill bit, the pins wedge in and don't fall out while soldering. So you tack them all up in short spell, then solder them. I don't quite get the popularity of copper rivets. I know you can make them near-flush, but they are way more time-consuming and not very small, themselves.The only reason I rarely use them is the vias have to be fairly large. Mostly I end up using 30 AWG bare wire. Run it in/out of every via willy nilly. Solder them down, first. Then cut out the pieces that aren't supposed to be there.If they could make these 1/3 or 1/4 scale, for 0.032" board and much smaller hole and higher density, I would be very interested in buying them.The way I have always used them is to drill the hole so the tack floats a half a mm or so above the board when it's stuffed. When you flow it, solder readily flows into the gap. So the via spacing is pretty much limited by the size of the head on the tacks.

author: PureBasic
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 07, 2020, 12:44:00 am
content: Hey, thanks a lot, @KL27x!Well, I guess I'll have to find other tricks.The main advantage of rivets in my eyes is that there is still a hole to pass through after you installed them. So if you have a lot of flush TH components (like big caps) you could still implant them without having to make them stand 4mm above the copper for soldering.But meh... just looking at a video of guys implanting rivets on a PCB is painful.

author: Wendy_Preston
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2020, 08:06:57 am
content: I can confirm that these are our track pins, I remember the long green boxes they used to be packaged in. We had a number of different sizes, the last ones were made obsolete in 2013, I'm afraid. The sales had dropped to a level that they were un-economic to sustain as a product group.https://www.harwin.com/obsolete-products/T1559-46/As others have mentioned, you can use a bit of wire, copper rivet or a PCB terminal as a substitute - at the heart of the product, it really is just a piece of metal stuck through a hole and soldered each side of the board. The advantage of these was they were user-friendly for low-volume/hobbyist users, with a retaining rib to hold it in the hole, a shoulder to stop it falling through and a taper to make hand insertion easier.The rise of the plated through hole via replaced these products in volume production, and we just couldn't support them as a product anymore, sorry! I hope one of the other suggestions by the other contributors might give you an option for your build.

author: PureBasic
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 07, 2020, 02:46:44 pm
content: Thanks a lot @Wendy_Preston.Just out of curiosity, do you remember how these pins were manufactured? It always puzzled me!

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2020, 08:37:25 pm
content: Looking at it under a microscope, I am certain-enough-for-me that they are machined on a lathe from a copper alloy wire that has the OD of the head of the tack. The entire shape is made by subtraction/cutting on this lathe. Then the strips are tin-plated. The machining could be CNC, or it could be done with cams and a motor.The strips, themselves, all have a uniform bend pr curve to them, which suggests a die that makes each strip in one press. But you can see turning marks on them, everywhere... except on the largest OD of the head of the tack, which has striations the longitudinal direction from getting advanced through this special lathe, in my mind; lathe stops, wire advances, single pin gets turned, repeat X times, cut the strip off all the way; after X strips, the next length of wire is inserted - perhaps an entire reel of copper wire goes on there and spins with the lathe. The magic is in the automation, here. So I don't think these marks are from a die. There's also no sign of a seam or flashing. So I'd say that the uniform macro-curve to each strip is due to starting and stopping the cut in exactly the same spot, over and over. So all these moving parts are either cammed from the same motor or run by the same computer. This is probably a low rpm turning with a sharp cutter.Edit: On second thought, I have a better guess as to the macro-curve. They are probably machined in much longer strips that get spooled on a large diameter reel (or perhaps some other jig where they droop due to gravity) for the plating. Then they're cut into shorter sections sometime later in processing.

author: PureBasic
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 07, 2020, 11:06:42 pm
content: @KL27x,Yeah that's what I noticed also, and I had the feeling they were turned. I missed the link auto-advance chuck that is enabling such a low rigidity part to be turned!What if they didn't have a spool in there but a magazine of pre-cut and straightened bars. You would receive them in a funnel and you could just push them in the chuck with whatever linear actuator you have on hand. Once loaded I guess the CNC Lathe handles the advance steps.Aaah, found something quite similar

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2020, 11:49:12 pm
content: Very cool. It appears that the stock gets fed while it's spinning/cutting, even. That looks like quite the balancing act.

author: Wendy_Preston
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2020, 08:29:25 am
content: Quote from: PureBasic on May 07, 2020, 02:46:44 pmSorry for the delay PureBasic, only on here once a weekFrom what I remember, this might have been another reason why we finally killed these off. We have a policy of keeping our production machinery up-to-date, and I have a feeling these were run on some really old equipment. I do recall some turning machines that were fed from a continuous spool of metal rod/wire, and may even have been pre-electronic - the profile was cut into a cam and the machine followed the cam to cut the wire. I assume the cutting head did the rotating as you couldn't rotate the material being cut, I never saw them close-up! The track pins were machined maybe individually or in batches of 2/3, then the wire was advanced and the next ones cut. The pins were kept on a continuous length, and reeled back onto a medium size wooden reel. This then went to the plating line for reel-to-reel plating. Finally, they were hand-snapped into the right lengths and hand packaged into the boxes - again yet another reason for removing the process, the cost of these items was getting hard to justify the hand assembly requirements.This was all done at our UK headquarters factory, and therefore labour costs are not that cheapAnyway, when it came to upgrade the turning machines, I don't believe we had any other products that required continuous reeled material - everything else was individual loose components, and the newer machines use hoppers that take 3m long straight bar. The sales of the track pins were unfortunately nowhere close to justifying maintaining one of these machines or buying a modern replacement that made only track pins, and we needed the floor space.Anyway, hope that answers your question!

author: KL27x
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2020, 08:52:10 pm
content: Sounds about right, to me. I think my box of track pins cost me around 70 bucks, and I didn't feel like that was due to a crazy high margin.