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OT: Diameter of stereo audio connector. A .001 difference makes a difference, how?

rons

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Mar 5, 2009
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OT: Diameter of stereo audio connector. A .0015 difference makes a difference, how?

For a plating knowledgeable type:

A audio connector that wobbled around a bit and did not give solid contact. I measured the diameter and it was .0015 less than another one I had.
I bought a new one yesterday (probably import) which was the normal size. And it works with no problem.

Normal - .136
Under size - .1345 (The size along the ground leg varies from .1345 on one end to .135 on the other end).

Is .0015 a difference amount that would have been added or subtracted for a plating operation? This a hostage situation you see.
The only place to get these are across the water. No accountability.

The connector in question is a standard audio male connector. Front section (left channel), middle section (right channel), base section (common).
Whatever the plating is used in all this stuff, I don't know. Shinny zinc? The connector does attract a magnet but it is a weak force. Brass connector
with a little zinc on top?
 
For a plating knowledgeable type:

A audio connector that wobbled around a bit and did not give solid contact was too much. I measured the diameter and it was .001 less than
what was normal for and old one that I had. I bought a new (probably import) on yesterday which was the normal size. And it works with no problem.

Is .001 a difference amount that would have been added or subtracted for a plating operation?

The connector in question is a standard audio male connector. Front section (left channel), middle section (right channel), base section (common).
Whatever the plating is used in all this stuff, I don't know. Shinny zinc? The connector does attract a magnet but it is a weak force. Brass connector
with a little zinc on top?

What size connector, 3/32", 1/8", 1/4"? TRS and TRRS connectors come in different sizes. Having worked with these for many decades in A/V production, I highly doubt 0.001" difference in diameter was the issue. These connectors have spring contacts for the TR or TRR portion of the connection and the sleeve connects mostly by being pushed to the side by the spring pressure of the other contacts. Other than oxidation issues these connectors are fairly reliable if they are quality parts, but most these days are super cheap garbage. It is more likely that the failure in the connector you had was actually a failure in the wires connecting to the connector under the likely plastic overmolding.
 
What size connector, 3/32", 1/8", 1/4"? TRS and TRRS connectors come in different sizes. Having worked with these for many decades in A/V production, I highly doubt 0.001" difference in diameter was the issue. These connectors have spring contacts for the TR or TRR portion of the connection and the sleeve connects mostly by being pushed to the side by the spring pressure of the other contacts. Other than oxidation issues these connectors are fairly reliable if they are quality parts, but most these days are super cheap garbage. It is more likely that the failure in the connector you had was actually a failure in the wires connecting to the connector under the likely plastic overmolding.

This is a picture. The bottom connector is the bad one. It originally came with the metal hood.
The top and middle connectors were bought yesterday and both came with black plastic hoods. I swapped a black for a metal head.
There is enough slop in the bad one to cause the right channel to cut out. The right channel is the a the tip and Was intermittent and bothersome.
Up on the roof of my house doing some painting and trying to listen to Physical Graffiti. That was the last straw... :drink:

DSC_1160.jpg
 
you will notice that the "L" tab for which the wire is soldered onto which is riveted to the tip ring sleeve assembly. not reliable construction.

if you were to solder the wire directly to the tip ring sleeve, there would be no rivets to loosen up.
 
As thermite said, the problem is in the jack, not the plug. Weak springs or cracked plastic that allow the spring to move.

It is extremely common for these connectors, which are a commodity item ie built to a price point, to not last for the life of a product.

My guess is that eventually even the "good" connectors won't work well.
 
This is a picture. The bottom connector is the bad one. It originally came with the metal hood.
The top and middle connectors were bought yesterday and both came with black plastic hoods. I swapped a black for a metal head.
There is enough slop in the bad one to cause the right channel to cut out. The right channel is the a the tip and Was intermittent and bothersome.
Up on the roof of my house doing some painting and trying to listen to Physical Graffiti. That was the last straw... :drink:

View attachment 333904

What ? No gold painted ones ?

Your a wanker if you don't buy gold painted everything in audio.
 
Prolly brass, tin over nickel plating (decent contact properties, good Solderability). Phos bronze base material if spring contacts present.

A plating knowledgeable type.

I looked at the plating on the old connector at high mag. Looks like 100 grit sandpaper. Maybe the ChiComms do it that way for traction.
I know it is the dimension. I had this thing in a fixture and it would not break contact by itself. Only when in the connection hole.
Another example of a crappy import that people eagerly buy up. Including hostages like me.:cryin:
 
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0.001" or 0.025mm is not going to make any difference. The tolerances for the telephone style plugs (ring, tip, sleeve) and sockets are a lot looser than that.

As someone said above, the commonly available, consumer grade ones are made to a price point. And the problems are inside the connector, not where you or I can repair them.

Another place where even more problems occur is in the sockets or female connectors. They also are made to a price point and with severs size restrictions. Total recipe for zero reliability.

Working in TV engineering, I had to deal with consumer grade plugs and sockets many times. They were not my choice of connectors to use but when the equipment you were forced to use had them, you had to make the best of a bad situation. At first, I tried to find good ones, but for the smaller sizes (under 1/4" or the slightly smaller size used by the telephone company) just never stood up. In the end, I just purchased ready-made cords in various length and in quantity. I could get 10 or 25 such cords with the connectors already on them for less than my time would cost to solder on one connector. Often I would cut the cord to length, using only one of the factory installed connectors. And when they went bad, they went in the trash and a new cord was cut to length and put in service.

In the larger sizes you can still get good quality connectors but they will be around $15 or $20 or even more each and you still need to use the proper technique when installing them.

Now that I am retired and have occasional need for such cables for audio or whatever, I still buy ready-made cables in packages of ten. Use and toss when they go bad. You can't fight it.
 
PS: Gold is for low resistance when low level signals are in use. Consumer audio is not that low in level and gold connectors are generally just a waste. There are excellent ways to plate a connector so that it will last for many hundreds of thousands of cycles without the use of gold. And the thin gold layers that are used in connectors will be wiped off at the actual point of contact after just a few (count them on your hands) cycles. It may still look good, but the gold at the point of connection is GONE.

Gold looks neat, but in most consumer uses it is not really needed.
 
0.001" or 0.025mm is not going to make any difference. The tolerances for the telephone style plugs (ring, tip, sleeve) and sockets are a lot looser than that.

There is a noticeable difference in side-to-side movement between pieces. The old plug worked in a handheld ChiComm FM radio.
But it doesn't like to fit in a Japanese music player. ChiComm meets the Sumo Wrestler.

It's easy to type an opinion without seeing it up close. Even the stuff I machine is easily seen to be out of wack when I'm .0015 over or under.

Serve the ChiComm economy. Let's do it.

6799704271_889c4e19e5_z.jpg
 
The short answer is to use Switchcraft plugs and jacks, versus random Chinese stuff, unless one has the time to test and qualify some Chinese stuff (which I also have used).

The standard weak spot, then and now, is the on the plug, being the connection formed at the rivet junction between the center post and the solder tab.

The standard remedy from the 1970s was to solder tab to center rivet with a very slight amount of Tinner's Flux (zinc chloride and HCl in H20) applied with a wetted toothpick, just wetting the metal-to-metal gap between center and tab, followed by ordinary radio solder. This is done before assembly onto the cable, and the just soldered plug is washed off with hot water to eliminate the corrosive surface residue from the Tinner's Flux.


This method was also used for attaching tabs to riveted solder tabs on Keystone battery holders, so corrosive ooze from the battery would not corrode the tab-to-rivet mating surfaces, causing an unreliable connection.


These fixes are permanent.
 
More drink.

Taller roof.

Less straw.

End of problem?

If your ignorance about audio connectors was so freakin' critical as to justify a PM thread?

I can only hope Hell has frozen over before we find out what you consider TRIVIAL!

:(

More drink.

Taller roof.

Less straw.

End of problem?

If your ignorance about audio connectors was so freakin' critical as to justify a PM thread?

I can only hope Hell has frozen over before we find out what you consider TRIVIAL!

:(

Taller roof, less straw, now that's f'ing funny

------------------------

I don't think the OP could think his way out of a paper bag, even if his life depended on it.
 
Taller roof, less straw, now that's f'ing funny

------------------------

I don't think the OP could think his way out of a paper bag, even if his life depended on it.

As usual, some of you imbeciles don't know how to write a sentence.

I don't think. The OP could think his way out of a paper bag, even if his life depended on it.

Periods count for proper grammar. Yes, some people can't think because somebody always did it for them.
We already know you are in the spermite category. Don't make it worse for yourself.
 
OK, I must admit that I have not seen your particular problem up close. But I have seen an awful lot of connector problems in my career and I was the one who had to fix them. There must be a point where after reducing the diameter one thousandth after another you do reach a situation where just one more thousandth does make a difference. But you seemed to be saying that it was just .0015" under the nominal size and I really doubt that would be the tipping point for connectors of this type. But again, without the socket you are trying to use it in, I could be wrong. There are tolerances on both the connector and the socket.

One thing that I have seen is that sockets will get looser with repeated use. They have contacts in them that must flex and some plugs are larger then others. Those larger plugs can, over time, increase the minimum size of connectors that will work in the sockets. That I have seen. It is always best to use one size plug and not to mix them.

The one that you bought and which works OK is probably larger. But it is also new and therefore the insides are still factory fresh. But it, in time, may also be problematic. That also is from my experience. And unless you are going to replace both the plug and the socket with really high quality (and high price) parts, you will probably have the same problem some time in the future. It is in the nature of the consumer product beast.

As for blaming the ChiComm economy, the quality of a US produced connector that is priced to compete with theirs will be a lot worse. It would have to be to maintain the same price point. Just look at the RCA phono plug and sockets which were US designed and produced. They were literally designed to be the cheapest connectors possible and, in large measure, they succeeded. And that was long before the ChiComm economy even existed. We were worried about cheap imports from Japan back then. But perhaps you do not remember that.



There is a noticeable difference in side-to-side movement between pieces. The old plug worked in a handheld ChiComm FM radio.
But it doesn't like to fit in a Japanese music player. ChiComm meets the Sumo Wrestler.

It's easy to type an opinion without seeing it up close. Even the stuff I machine is easily seen to be out of wack when I'm .0015 over or under.

Serve the ChiComm economy. Let's do it.

View attachment 333993
 
Switchcraft is an OK company, but they have different lines of connectors and some are designed to compete with the cheap Chinese ones. In fact, they are probably Chinese made themselves but Switchcraft probably has better QC in place when they import them.

That rivet like connection (staked may be a better term for it) can be a problem. Many of them are loose enough to allow the tab to rotate. That alone can cause shorts inside the connector.

I have seen and repaired many connector problems and with the telephone style ones the biggest things I have seen are too much strain on the cable which produces an actual break in the wire and intermittent connection and just plain bad assembly technique.

I have seen some where the plug was actually bent, some actually in two pieces.

And I have seen some that were so poorly assembled that the wires or strands from them were in intermittent contact with the other conductors inside the shells.

Believe it or not, but these problems are far, far more prevalent than those due to tolerances in the diameters of the plugs.



The short answer is to use Switchcraft plugs and jacks, versus random Chinese stuff, unless one has the time to test and qualify some Chinese stuff (which I also have used).

The standard weak spot, then and now, is the on the plug, being the connection formed at the rivet junction between the center post and the solder tab.

The standard remedy from the 1970s was to solder tab to center rivet with a very slight amount of Tinner's Flux (zinc chloride and HCl in H20) applied with a wetted toothpick, just wetting the metal-to-metal gap between center and tab, followed by ordinary radio solder. This is done before assembly onto the cable, and the just soldered plug is washed off with hot water to eliminate the corrosive surface residue from the Tinner's Flux.


This method was also used for attaching tabs to riveted solder tabs on Keystone battery holders, so corrosive ooze from the battery would not corrode the tab-to-rivet mating surfaces, causing an unreliable connection.


These fixes are permanent.
 
Switchcraft is an OK company, but they have different lines of connectors and some are designed to compete with the cheap Chinese ones. In fact, they are probably Chinese made themselves but Switchcraft probably has better QC in place when they import them.

That rivet like connection (staked may be a better term for it) can be a problem. Many of them are loose enough to allow the tab to rotate. That alone can cause shorts inside the connector.

I have seen and repaired many connector problems and with the telephone style ones the biggest things I have seen are too much strain on the cable which produces an actual break in the wire and intermittent connection and just plain bad assembly technique.

I have seen some where the plug was actually bent, some actually in two pieces.

And I have seen some that were so poorly assembled that the wires or strands from them were in intermittent contact with the other conductors inside the shells.

Believe it or not, but these problems are far, far more prevalent than those due to tolerances in the diameters of the plugs.

Switchcraft now may be different, but when I visited them, they had a lot of rotary multiple station machines turning out jacks and plugs in Chicago. And this was after a bunch of asian sources were already taking business away. The asian copies were not as good, in several important ways.

Most of the jack /plug fits are looser than a thou. Obviously the smaller the plug, the tighter the tolerance has to be in order to not be very sloppy. So they may not be a lot looser.

Also, the length of the guide tube of the jack makes a difference. The shorter, the tighter the tolerance in order to avoid being too sloppy.

Too much slop allows (as mentioned) the plug to move away from the tip and/or ring contact. That is usually not a big issue, since the contact in the jack has usually got a fairly large range of motion.

I'd definitely agree that most problems with plugs and jacks are either in the wires, or the internal construction of the plug. Staked / riveted assembly is the biggest issue with the plugs themselves. For the diameter to be an issue, it would have to be a pretty gross difference.

odds are you just have a bad plug.
 
... Switchcraft probably has better QC in place when they import them.
My experience is, this is all just talk. When you get right down to it, they don't have doodly-squat in place, they won't spend another nickel to prevent problems, they keep banging on the suppliers to lower the cost while the purchasers do less than nothing to make things better. Imagine the worst, cheapest-ass purchasing agent you've ever dealt with, and that's who is running the show.

Talk is cheap.
 








 
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