 The great search brought to you by digikey and a fruit every single weekly to use a part of engineering help us you find the things that you need on digikey.com and I didn't get you that screenshot, but this is this is from a request. Okay, yes, as a request, you sound social media. Jeremy Cook asked, is there such a thing as an SMT screw terminal block and got some responses, some of which were not screw terminal blocks. So let's let's show what a terminal block normally is because we've covered lots of terminal blocks. So terminal block normally looks like this. This oh yeah good my computer goes looks like this, and it's a through whole soldering thing and then on the top. There are these screws Phillips or flathead and you screw it to lift up the dislike pinching piece that then attaches the wire she's a very, very, very, very common. They're great when you have raw wires stranded solid, they can easily handle multiple amps of current, very high voltages, classic wire to board connector. But the one thing is that you do need to have to through whole solder them and so let's go to the overhead and I'll show an example. So this is a relay board and this is a prototype earlier prototype and you can see that it's got these terminals here soldered and you can take a hand solder them in in order to connect to the relay. And that, you know, there's a couple reasons why you might not want to have through whole terminal blocks one. If this is high voltage now you have a high voltage exposed that somebody could touch or if they're on a metal table it can get shorted out you don't want that. But also manufacturing wise if you're not handling very high torque, like if you're not people are really twisting it, then, and they're fairly gentle. This is an extra step that might require hand soldering or selective or wave soldering or there might be components on the other side that you want to not interfere with. So having SMT terminal blocks could be very handy. So, good question so I thought let's go to Digikey and let's see. You're like it's just such a thing exist. Well if it existed Digikey would stop it right so let's go to the computer, and we'll see so we're going to look for terminal blocks. That's what these are called. And there's a couple different ones there's like the headers, punks and sockets and then there's the wire to board but this is the same group so we're just going to click on terminal blocks it looks similar to what we're looking for so yeah. These are the standard through whole terminal blocks. Oh no there's like ones that have a push button and sort of screws. So, you know, even though like they're often called screw terminal blocks. They may have pushy pushy in parts. Okay, so, first up let's look only at active ones, because we don't want to find something and then be disappointed you can't actually get it. Next, let's go to stacked so you can see it. I got the screens up. Oh you want to go to a real faster. This is the question hopefully they exist we're going to find out. It's 1000 views, but not the same as a video customer main for you. Okay, okay so back to the back to the computer. Okay, so under mounting type this is where the action comes so you notice that there's a couple variations here and a few of them look promising. This one and then you option click and get the other one to surface mount we're going to ignore the panel mountain through whole. Like 500 options just great. I don't know the pitch that they wanted. But I'm going to, you know, assume it doesn't really matter so the most popular one and some people did mention it and the least expensive is going to be waggle SMD terminal blocks so these are like 50 cents in quantity. And this is, you know, it's not a screw terminal block. It's like a push type. You can get the. Okay. They look like this and then let's get the bottom. There's no phone the long. There's two pads here that you saw during so it's, it's got like two very long pads for mechanical strength because there isn't any mounting bosses, and then wires go in the holes here and then these are little push. buttons you use to release wire so if you go to the overhead actually was ample. So we've used these in this motor MOSFET driver. This is what I've got here these are waggle blocks you can see they are mechanically very strong. They do take wires of various sizes including, you know, even wider with with ends on them. Push them in. And now this is, you know, fairly solid and then, you know, you would have to press this to release. So you can push a wire in, although you can also press, and that you know that opens up the slot. And then, if you want to move it. You can press. Ideally, you press with something like a pen. I'm sure there's an official tool, but I like to use a pen. The only thing is I'll tell you that this, you know, it hasn't happened to me as long as you're using official waggle blocks is that if you do overheat these if you put them in a lead free process and you overheat them. They can become a little brittle and we, you know, we've had. Early when we use these we overheated the oven to get, you know, we wanted to make sure that our board got a good reflow. These got a little brittle and then this piece broke off. Hasn't happened to us once we've like tweaked the oven profile, but it is something to watch for. Okay, so back to the computer. So you can get these waggle blocks in a variety of sizes they have like one, two and three, they're fairly inexpensive. Yeah, you're not going to get anything as inexpensive as a. Oh, and then these are actually these Mets connectors never seen these before. They're not cool. They come in different pitches I think it's just 508 millimeter sorry this is eight millimeter and this is three millimeter. So they do come you know they'll come in like 2.5 but they come in like your standard pitches and they usually they also have individuals. I'll say they don't come in like very wide numbers you'll have to you put them next to each other if you need a long run. However, this is not what the person asked for they asked for screw type not push button type and I'm assuming that they actually care. So if you go over here under wire termination you'll see that there's actually screw and screw list so we actually want screw type. So let's look at those. And let's look also at normally stocking. Make sure that they're available. And we'll look at, you know, at lowest to highest pricing. So there are, you know, SMT mount terminal blocks, and there's two that I found and one, they're both good. This one. You can see, you know, the nice long wires instead of going down these got bent over and then to prevent you from torquing and twisting the terminal block off the PCB. They have these bosses on the side. So this comes in three. This is an ethanol family. They kind of look pretty good Phoenix also has a version but ethanol has looks like two, three and four size, which you know makes sense and then you just as many as you need you just tell them together. Oh actually looks like they have a couple more that five maybe, maybe more sizes. This one's kind of funky. And then worth also has something similar. We did cover. And looks like oh interesting when you get to six. They actually. I wonder if they don't have the bosses anymore. A picture of the bottom one second. See if we got the data sheet here. Maybe not. Looks like they probably have the bosses come from the bottom. But if you want a version that you know what I'm used to is you get two and three size terminal blocks and then you stack them side by side. If you want those. You kept to go because these have again we these have the bosses on the side. You can go with. TEs. So hold on let me look for TE and we covered these on IMPI. And they're actually quite nice to the terminal block series. So what's nice about these is that they have the boss underneath not to the side so you can have as many as you want side to side and if you want like if you need a really long run. You know you can just pick and place multiple next to each other. So these are, you know, these are pretty you still need of course really chunky pads. And don't forget the mounting boss holes you definitely need them and don't make them too big you want them to be a nice tight fit to get that mechanical strength but. But they're very good. So actually quite a few options. The only thing is to note, you know, you're going to pay more than. Then through whole version. Yeah, so only use this if cost isn't a big deal because even though you're saving yourself the process of soldering that the terminal blocks, they're going to be more expensive than probably the labor that it costs to solder them in. Good when you have, you don't want to have exposed pins. Definitely. These are going to work great. Or you have something on the other side and you don't want the terminal block to like go through and interfere with those other components. So, check out te's board mount reflow terminal blocks. They do exist. And I've been a long didgeridoo. That's a great search.