 Every single weekly data user powers of engineering to show you how to find things on digikey.com things you need it's a useful skill now because Global parts shortage lady data. What are you going to show how to find this week? I'll just go ahead. Yeah. Okay. So working on my floppy disk project I needed a special flex connector that was a little different than most and so I thought I'd show how to that I was actually kind of curious like where am I gonna get this custom flex cable and then I kind of realized While searching on digikey that they have like every kind of flex cable in every length and every size and every pin count So like already stopped which is which is pretty amazing. So let's look at the overhead real fast and I'll show what it is That I am using so to connect to an existing laptop floppy drive. I need to get a FPC cables This is a flex cable and the thing is is that I actually got the wrong kind of cable here So I wanted it to be like, you know, this this way, but it's twisted. You see it's twisted because I want the contacts to be On the same side. I'll see I'll show you what I got and then I'll show you what I So this is what I got and I got the wrong thing So this is I believe these are called a b cables because the the pin a here goes to be like it goes to the opposite Side, but basically there's like reverse and there's same side there There's not a formal name for them, but there's two types Even if you have a contacts on the same side, you have my alternate sides I got the alternate side one, but what I really wanted Was this to go like that. So I wanted it to be on the same side like not not like this like twisted You know, so it's like blue and blue And this is not a standard connector pitch. This is one shiny This is one millimeter pitch not point five millimeter pitch, which is much more common most Displays are point five millimeters. What you normally kind of deal with in electronics. So we're just going to Look on Digikey to show the vast number of FPC cables that are available Anyways, go play make millions with Tom Snyder. It's fun game Even has a Wikipedia entry. This game is more famous than you, Bill. Yeah, okay So let's look for FPC. That's actually what I searched for So there's the connectors and the cables and like I said, there's 18,000 cables a lot of cables So the first thing we want to limit is the number of pins. So I just like sat there and counted there's 26 pins So the number of conductors Is 26 you'll see like you can get any number you want up to 80. There's a lot so now we've got it down to 26 pin cables connectors, but you'll notice that there's a lot that are fine pitch So we want to make sure that the ones we're getting are one millimeter pitch and Because I only need a couple of them. I just want to quickly kind of get them get this working I'm gonna only search for in stock And I also only want active parts And Then the question is the length So the exposed ends it doesn't really matter like it's the connector is pretty big So it's fine no matter what the length actually went a little bit too short here I really want it to be around like 150 to 200 Millimeters I want like six to six to eight inches the one I got was like four inches or so like much too short I've determined so apply all and a lot of options came up So I ended up getting Actually kind of just sorted through price because I was you know lazy and I picked up some of these So watch out because the image is like symbolic, right? It's only like eight contacts. They're not 26. It's a it's symbolic But I also want to make sure I've got the right Termination style so the way to describe it here are top on both sides back around both sides Top on one side bottom on the other So it top on both sides mean it's the contacts are on the top and top and bottom means they're inverted so I want top on Both sides so both ends have the contacts on the top Just to make sure and then yeah this one that I saw so you can see like you want it like this where it's like blue Is on the same side? Or this actually a better image so you can see that's what I want I want the contacts to be on the same side so it's you know when it comes in and goes into my connector It doesn't twist 90 degrees. You just have to watch out like it's pin one pin one. I don't know just make sure But I'm gonna just pick up, you know, there's like 3,000 stock here and then bonus round. I'll also show how you can Find the matching connector because if you look on the bottom it actually tells you some good options And this is actually pretty close to what I want. I want top contact 26 pin point one Sorry one millimeter pitch only thing is this is actually while this is what I want. It's it's not in stock so I'll just quickly get an equivalent. So yeah, this is what I want though It's like I got that that wide One millimeter you can see that the pins are like kind of wider apart And you get the little nubs and the contacts you can even see the contacts there on the top because it's top-to-top connector So I'll just quickly go down here and I'll say okay Well, I want a flex connector and I want it to be active Surface mount right angle to want to come out the side Contacts on the top 26 positions one millimeter pitch. The rest is not as important. It's like the color and stuff and And So there were a lot of other options available which is great and I'm going to search only in stock It's only five options and Ended up getting this one, which was either there's a couple. This one has a photo, which is kind of nice There's also this one But I like this one looks very similar to the style that I'm used to It's not a 3d, but it has this little these pull tabs that work very easily. So this is What I'm going to get For the great search. All right, and that's a great search for this week