 The great search brought to you by digikey and a fruit every single weekly data brings you guess you The best ways to find that what you're looking for part substitutions and more on digikey.com. Thank you digikey lady Ada What is a great search of the week of this week? Okay, so Let's go the overhead and I'm gonna show off some shield designs. So this week I've been working on this TFT shield and shields are devices that plug into my controllers like, you know, this Arduino and I also have this sorry Metro Arduino shaped things and they have this version and Most Shields have pin headers. So like this NFC shield Has pin headers that are soldered in and then, you know, plug in nicely. I'm sorry plug it nicely over here Into the socket headers. So Let me see another shield. So this is like a tester shield, for example, and this Flugs in nicely nice and securely and then you've got The pins on the top and the pins on the bottom and they make a good mechanical electrical connection However, there's once in a while you'll have a shield where you Can't have two headers like for example, this TFT shield I'm working on the TFT shield is Has this 2.8 inch display and the display is like exactly the same size as the shield And so if I did have the pins come through Like on you know, these others They would come up and they would short against this metal piece that holds the backlight and that would be very sad Yes, you know, you could maybe put padding or something But essentially with something that's a touchscreen where people are like poking and prodding it and pushing it There's a high percentage. Even if you're in a foam protector or something that these sharp little Pin ends would poke through the top and again short to the metal Plate so no good. So in such cases, I like to use surface mount headers and you can see here These headers they the way they're manufactured is much like pin headers except that the ends are bent over and They're belt they're bent over alternating style like one over one to the left one to the right and You know, it's not as strong as to home But it's fairly strong like I've had fewer issues than I'd expect especially if is if you're using long Number of pins like I went to pins. I don't know that would be really tough There's not a lot of mechanical strength But once you get to six or eight or ten, there's enough alternating solder pads that are really held down That this is, you know, pretty much as strong like I mean if you really wrenched it it'll it'll break off But if you really wrench these it'll they'll break off too. So or they'll bend so This and then of course this two by three socket header Make for a very elegant connection when you don't want any pins sticking out the top There's a lot of different reasons. Maybe you also want to have a very clean design on the top They do cost a little bit more, but they are stocked at each key I thought I'd show people how to find them since we've done pin headers before but we've not done surface mount pen headers so let's go to the computer and Let's search for header. That's what it's called And there's the specialty header and you'd think that maybe it would be under specialty header but actually specialty header is like really the weirdest stuff you've ever seen like these really like Cramping ones and these these ones where you can solder into the cups They like solder cup ends very in like swiss pin style These are definitely the weird ones cool things here But now we're looking for it because we want the surface mount. So I mean look at this Like what is going on here? Milmax, I mean There's 3,000 in stock this must be useful for something slots. I don't know what this work check out the data sheet Okay, so but what we want is just Pin headers and there's of course also socket versions of these as well. Oh Go over all show quickly on the overhead. I'm not gonna Cover it on the great search but if you you just mimic exactly what I'm searching but in the female socket header area and you can see This metro also doesn't have headers that go all the way through They also are socket it and have alternating legs and You know, there's a couple different ways to do this one, you know, you want a really nice smooth bottom here that can't short against anything on the table But also for manufacturability, you know, you can pick and place these components And in this particular case this was made this one was made before we had a select of solder machine And so it was actually easier and cheaper for us to pick and place these surface mount headers than it was to hand solder All the pins now, you know, we have selective solder and we have partners that do wave soldering so we can Or your hand solder So we can do that for these through letters, but there's there's quite a few pins So if you add up, okay, sorry, let's go back to the computer And continue on our quest So you want Stacked we want active and I'm gonna look for, you know, only one row. Oh, they do have Surface mount dual row, but not triple row dual row the pins go like, you know, they they go out like this But three pins. There's nowhere for that third pin to go So for three row like if for servo connections, you would if it's three by four You have to go through whole I'm gonna look at looking for only one row for now But again, you want to know just like to know pin pitch in this case, we're looking for your classic point one inch two point five four and Then number of pins again pick however many in this case and doing eight because That's common, but on an Arduino shield Our reading compatible shield you'll want six to eight and then one ten. Oh And they're unshrouded there's nothing there's no plastic around them okay, so Apply it looks like half from a half a million down to a hundred and seventy-five And you can take a look. Okay, so we have you know, there's definitely whoa. These are like kind of weird Weird pins, let's go Availability did I pick something wrong because these are unusual Hmm weird. I don't think so. Why did I pick? number of rows one row Eight pin pin pitch point one product status active shrine shrine. I don't know. Let's also look for only Oh, I must have done something Let me let me clear these out. I don't know what happened here Actually, I'm just gonna go back to the category. Well something really bad happened here Let's let's go back and start over They selected something. Okay pins Okay, so I want active and I'll do number of rows one or Dash and let me pick normally stocking Let's see. I like to look okay. Yeah, so I'm getting reasonable looking stuff And then I want eight positions Eight pins Okay, apply little slow arms going one one at a time and making sure that Yeah, okay. I'm still I'm seeing stuff that looks reasonable and Then I don't want No shrouding let's see Okay. Yeah, so I'm getting all the through-hole versions. So if you want to hold pins or right angle These are what's showing up now Okay, cool, but now I want pitch of Point one and I'm also gonna select the dash here in case That has stuff. So let's select that and yeah, most of them are still gonna be here. It looks good And then surface mount. So there's also white angles. There's also white angle surface mount, which I'll which I'll show honestly, the white angle surface mount header is I think is is tougher to Mechanically Support because at least with the vertical the style that points up you have like those alternating legs that are bent out with the right angle style They look like this There's really like it's so easy to whip those right off because there's nothing keeping them down On to the PCB. So and you see here's some of the ones that we are looking for So, you know, yes, they do exist But you really need to have something mechanical on top holding them in place So they don't they don't get torn off Even the more Pat more pads doesn't help like I think you know, maybe if they're like really huge pads with lots of vias Maybe like it would be mechanically strong, but Okay, and then I wanted to come on both we'll talk about the all positions loaded Let's do that And then I'm gonna get rid of the right angle Because I actually don't want right angle. I want the straight up style Okay, cool, lots of options here. Let's also pick ones that are in stock and It's something interesting. So some of these come in a bulk package So bulk means they're like literally in a bag and these are a little less expensive So if you look at these two, these are like the same part But one of them comes in bulk and one comes in tape-in-reel, and I'm not is it the bulk one is a bit cheaper When you get these on tape-in-reel, they're gonna come with a little tape cap a little piece of plastic That allows the pick-in-place to pick it up and also the wheel is like kind of tall and chunky So the wheeling itself, it's like not inexpensive So it's a little bit more pricey, but I'm going to use it in the pick-in-place So and you know if you're using it with a contract manufacturer, they're definitely gonna be like hey You need to give it to us and tape-in-reel. We're not gonna I wouldn't take it in bulk or a tube Those are gonna get stuck in the tube or they're gonna be hard to hand place But if if you happen to be hand soldering these or hand-placing them, you know bulk is I guess and then contact length I Think these are five. Let me just quickly check life Like multi meter. I mean you can of course get shorter headers but See These in the contact length they want is it's about six millimeters Yeah, so these two and then this is like long and then this is like short little Shorty style and then You know you can choose Gold or tin Honestly, I feel like these days gold finishes kind of where it's at. Okay, so we're down to five options Let's look Some things from Sam tech and Some you have this option from 3m Sam tech a couple different options. Definitely the least expensive is going to be this a conno stick at you know about 20 cents in quantity This is my pick I'll say one one last note on these So this all yes, you can see this is the the picking cap the pickup cap so it's stuck on and you remove it when you're done One thing I will note is that and this has bitten me is that this layout whether it's the rightmost This rightmost pan or leftmost pan is up or down is not consistent between SMT headers and I've gone I've went out of like an SMT head and I'm like, oh no, like let me find an alternative and realize that it was the alternate Orientation like the pins were the opposite way and so Honestly, I recommend if you're going to do the layout for these and you don't you don't have a guaranteed I have this connector and I'm 100% sure I'm always going to have this connector Even though this has Alternating like zigzag contacts you should put in the missing ghost contact here and here and here like where these crosses come Have another set of contacts and you know the pace will just go on them and they won't be used But if you happen to need to swap The orientation because you can't get one and the other like the replacement you have happens to have the other way around You can pick in place it and it'll still work fine because you'll have both contacts so you know Believe me, it's it's happened to me and I was like really bummed that I was sick Oh my god I have like 5,000 of these Connectors and like I can't use them or I can use them on the next revisions the next one I did I did the alternate now I have I've standardized and I have the connector and I don't I'm careful with that but Just as it just as an alert that there was two There's chiralities to these SMT headers so this is my pick for a great search and it's in stock even