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I’m recreating a flex circuit PCB that was made in the 1980s.
It has several single female connectors for use with LEDs and I’m trying to locate a replacement connector/solution.
I’ve attached my best attempt at a technical drawing and some pictures to help explain what I’m looking for.
The connectors on the flex PCB insert through the back of a plastic housing, then the LEDs are inserted through the front to the connectors.
The old circuit crimped the connector to the flex PCB, I planned to solder them onto pads by either using a different connector or by closing the crimp, then using solder. So in the attached picture, the rear of the connector doesn’t need to crimp a wire or crimp to a board.
Depending on the options, I can adjust some tolerances in my design, but need the LED to sit in the connectors properly and I can’t modify the plastic housing.
Unless anyone has a better idea, I suppose a last ditch effort might be to place to metal strips together, solder to the board, then create a v-shape inside the plastic housing channel.
That’s a rather old manufacturing technology, and I doubt that there’s much in the way of new production materials to support it. That said, for one-off hobby/repair type applications, the female contacts intended for use with common 0.1" rectangular connectors might be a thing that could be appropriated for the task. Those sold as cut tape (as opposed to the pre-separated, bulk variety) might be preferable, by virtue of possibly using the metal tape as part of the solution. Some ideas along these lines are here.
Thank you. Yes, it is old technology.
It’s from cars in the 1980s.
What happens is the flex circuit glue comes apart and the circuit traces fall out, thus shorting out traces, rending parts of the circuit useless. Which affects the dashboard of the car.
I’m not mass producing anything, just doing some hobby work to get things working again.
re-creating the traces is easy, but still have to have some type of replacement connector to rebuild it all.
I’ll take a look at your link.
Thanks
Thanks Nick.
That is super close. Looks like it is a little too wide and long as well.
Is there a way for me to search for similar ones that might size better?
-Larry
