Press-fit connectors without expensive tooling

Press-fit connectors in prototypes... without expensive tooling?

For series production you obviously use the proper press-fit tooling. But for a few ProtoPCBA's? Then it sometimes feels like overkill to wait for tooling with the associated costs.

So what do you do as an engineer?

You get creative.

At DeltaProto B.V. we almost always order a few extra PCB's.

For this job we modified one of them: 👉 drilled out the press-fit holes +0.4 mm 👉 used that PCB as an alignment and pressing tool

Result?

Perfect alignment and clean press-fit connections.

Sometimes the best tooling is already sitting in your PCB panel.

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