Part Details
| MFR PART # | 2101-0180-03 |
|---|---|
| DIGIKEY PART # | 4414-2101-0180-03-ND |
| MANUFACTURER | Encitech Connectors AB |
| DESCRIPTION | 25 Position D-Sub Plug, Male Pins Connector |
| DATASHEET | Click Here |
Explanation
A customer called explaining that they weren’t seeing the gold plating on the pins and wondered if they got the wrong part. The image on the website appears to have more brass/gold colored pins on the back side and the internal conductors are hard to make out. However, the datasheet has a picture that isn’t very clear if the solder cups are plated or not:
Page one of the datasheet gives a little bit of context by describing that the part has “Selective Gold Over Nickel.” There isn’t context as to what this means in this document. There is another document that makes this a little more clear:
The MATERIAL statement on the right hand side does say the following:
It is possible that 1µm of gold may be hard to distinguish visually, however, I interpreted this statement that only half of the contact is plating; more importantly, it’s likely talking about the mating half which is far more important for parts that have gold plating. I reached out to the manufacturer to double check my assumption and they told me, “Selective plating in this case means that only the connective area is gold plated, the solder cup area is not.”