Board-to-board (BTB) connectors are suitable for stacking circuits boards one over another. Flat flexible cables can be avoided using these kinds of connectors; moreover it makes the entire unit more compact. The commonly used BTB connectors are SMT connectors and Berg Strip. We will discuss them in detail in this article.
SMT CONNECTOR
Surface Mount Technology (SMT) connector is a commonly found board-to-board connector in advanced circuit boards. As the name indicates this connector is available only in surface mount model. It is carefully mounted on to the solder pads on the surface of the PCB.
Fig. 1: Image of Male and Female SMT Connector
The image of a SMT male female pair is shown in the above figure. As you can see it has very fine pitch and hence occupies very small surface area of the PCB. It has very small height and hence the boards can be stacked together as closely as possible.
Fig. 2: Image showing male and female SMT connectors soldered to two boards
SMT connectors are ideal candidate for miniaturization due to their small area of occupancy and stacking height. They are suitable for double layered or multilayered PCBs. They are designed for high performance and reliability.
They commonly found in advanced circuit boards in networking equipment, telephones, mobile phones, computers and other consumer electronics.
Sample specification:
Contact resistance ———————— 50 mille ohm
Withstanding voltage ——————– 150 V AC
Insulation resistance ——————— >500 mega ohms
Berg Strip
BERG STRIP
Berg Strip is a commonly found connector in all kind of circuit boards. It is also called as Berg Stick because of its stick like structure. Berg Strip is designed by the Berg Electronics Corporation at Missouri.
The Berg Strip is very light and compact and it can be easily assembled to a circuit board. One of the main features of the Berg Strip is that, unlike other connector a designer can modify the connector module as per his imagination. The Burg Strip can be easily cut off into pieces having required pin numbers, and then the pieces can be arranged in a single row or in a row and column manner. This freedom makes the Berg Strip all-time favorite of the circuit designers.
Fig. 3: Image of Berg Strip
The above image shows male and female burg stick connector. They come with a predefined number of pins. The designer then cut off only the required number of pins and assembles to the circuit board. It can act as wire-to-board connector also; we can solder the wire to either of the connector pins and fix the other connector to the circuit board. When we solder wires to the pin of both the pair it can function as a wire-to-wire connector also. Normally they are used as board-to-board connectors with the male connector are soldered at the periphery of the circuit board and the female connector is assembled wherever another board is intending to be connected.
Fig. 4: Image of Berg Strip soldered on a PCB
They are designed for high reliability and quick assembly. They are also very cheap connectors. The Berg strips are used to carry both power and data.
Berg strip found its application in almost all kind of circuit modules, like GSM module, GPS module, Xbee module, LCD module and in all kind of circuit boards.
Sample specification:
Contact resistance ———————— 30 mille ohm
Current rating —————————— 1 A
Insulation resistance ——————— >1000 mega ohms
Summary
{C}{C}{C}{C}{C}· {C}{C}{C}{C}{C}Board-to-board connectors are used to connect a board to another board.
{C}{C}{C}{C}{C}· {C}{C}{C}{C}{C}It eliminates the requirement of flat cables and makes the unit more compact.
{C}{C}{C}{C}{C}· {C}{C}{C}{C}{C}The two commonly used board-to-board connectors are SMT and Berg Strip.
{C}{C}{C}{C}{C}· {C}{C}{C}{C}{C}SMT connectors use surface mount technology to mount the connector on the surface of the PCB and usually found in multilayered PCBs.
{C}{C}{C}{C}{C}· {C}{C}{C}{C}{C}Berg Strips are through hole components used in all kind of circuit modules.
Filed Under: Tutorials
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