The design of printed circuit board connectors is typically based on the best possible balance between technical and economic requirements. From a technical standpoint, factors such as the mechanical strength of the connection, the specific operating conditions, and the exact transmission performance requirements must be taken into account. From an economic perspective, the question arises as to how high the product’s quality truly needs to be, given the purpose and duration of the application.

Especially when it comes to high-quality and technically sophisticated products, customers often automatically specify gold-plated contact surfaces for connectors. In fact, gold is the only material that optimally combines all the properties that define the quality of a connector: Gold is corrosion-resistant and withstands even the harshest environmental conditions, shows virtually no material fatigue even after numerous mating cycles, and ensures optimal transmission of current and voltage even at temperatures up to 150 degrees Celsius. As a more cost-effective alternative, a silver coating is traditionally used—and, depending on the application, may even outperform gold in terms of electrical conductivity. However, the significantly higher normal contact force resulting from this can lead to undesirable limitations in the design of the connector in specific cases.

Through continuous optimization of the production process, an in-house strip plating facility not only allows for a high degree of flexibility regarding the types of contacts to be processed; it also enables the cost-effective production of contact surfaces tailored to specific requirements. When it comes to the use of gold, a connector manufacturer with its own in-house electroplating facility can reduce the use of this valuable precious metal to an absolute minimum—for example, by plating the contacts of blade and spring terminals only at specific points and directly at the location of the actual current and voltage transfer. Furthermore, having an in-house electroplating facility offers connector manufacturers the advantage of being able to produce a wide variety of other material combinations, such as nickel, tin, tin/lead, nickel/phosphorus, and palladium.
To achieve an optimal cost-benefit ratio and ensure maximum flexibility regarding the contact surface and the coatings to be configured, it is advisable to choose a connector manufacturer with its own electroplating facility. As a family-owned, German quality provider and one of the world’s leading manufacturers of PCB connectors, ept GmbH operates six in-house continuous-flow electroplating lines at two German locations, delivering complete solutions from a single source with high vertical integration, reliability and precision. This infrastructure enables the production of coatings from up to 10 different surface combinations with minimal modification effort.

 The customer- and application-specific configuration of PCB connectors is not limited to the surface, but encompasses the entire structure of a contact, including the base material and the intermediate layer. Based on the respective technical and economic requirements, specially developed processes enable the manufacture of highly customized products, whose quality is verified through ongoing testing in our own laboratories. Thus, operation in accordance with specifications is tested under conditions that far exceed the relevant standards. One example is the requirements of DIN 41612 connectors, according to which the quality of a product must be fully guaranteed even after 500 (quality level 1) or 400 (quality level 2) mating cycles.