November 03, 2025

#708 – All the Connectors with Davide Andrea

1 hour 5 minutes

Welcome Davide Andrea, author or The Electronic Connector Book! And many thanks to Blues for sponsoring this episode of The Amp Hour! Get 10% off your next order in their online store for a development kit by using the code AMPHOUR.

Davide is an engineer working on Battery Management Systems at Elithion

He got into writing and editing books via a postcard sent to him after he gave a talk

For many years he was an editor at Artech house

He works on Lithium BMS systems for large setups

How do young engineers learn about connectors, but for tribal knowledge within larger companies?

Digikey catalog is a good search for connectors overall

Industrial cinch by Harting

Should you design a custom connector (“no”)

Davide also built and maintains an online tool for finding connectors called Identiconn

Fretting is when vibration causes a connector to fail

Davide had to go to Bell Labs docs to look up some specs

Chris remarked that Identiconn is a McMaster (Carr) style browsing experience

Vendors divide based on how the fields are set up, because that is actually logical for them selling parts. It’s harder for finding/discovering components though.

On distributor sites, the connectors are grouped by how they were bought

Chris asked Davide about things that have gone wrong in his career with connectors

FFC doesn’t connect back into the socket after the tab is ripped away

ribbon cable vs ffc, CIC vs FPC

IDC – insulation displacement connector

Davide has filled in with generated terms where there are no defined language for a family/type of connector, such as with “bump idc” connectors

“dual beam?

Chris and Davide did a joint search for the high density CM4 connector that mounts the Raspberry Pi module to another board

Gender of connectors (note: there is a great discussion about the historical nature of using gender for connectors in the book)

Pin vs plastic gender

Shrouded vs enshrouded

gaziatea (sic) – poem from the 1800

USB type A connector

Self mating

APC7 – self mting connector

Anderson connectors

TNC BNC search

PFFE for the dielectric on a BNC/TNC

Magnetic connectors with pogo pins

Example connector from Hyte

Crimps were designed in the 50s

The source of having so many power connectors is … imperialism? tahiti / fiji / nz all have different connectors

Why antennas are male/female is…money? And regulatory silliness via the FCC

Davide has also written about and is working on lithium ion batteries

A sodium ion battery book (self published, unlike the LiIon books) should be out next year

The Connector Book is self published. Your purchase directly supports Davide’s work…and you get the web tools for free!

“peak lithium”

What is required when refining sodium for batteries?

The voltage range and charging needs are different for Sodium Ion. For instance, the range goes from 4V to 2V

Find Davide on his various websites, on LinkedIn, on StackExchange, and on reddit

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By The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

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