

The $11185 Connector - zdw
http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/06/the-11185-connector/

======
Alupis
The title is very misleading... it's not an $11,185 connector, that's the
price of setting up custom tooling for this component. After-which the factory
quoted a very reasonable $0.13 per piece.

The author went into this stating he'd be willing to pay for their tooling...
then is sticker-shocked when they quote him for so. It's like the author went
into this thinking they'd pay a few hundred bucks (for the custom tooling) and
get a short fab run (< 100) back out. These factories aren't going to tool-up
unless they're about to produce thousands... it doesn't matter if it's PCB's,
connectors, action figures, jewelry display stands, etc. It's not worth their
time at small scale.

The reason these connectors are difficult to find (if possible at all) is
people aren't buying them... so you have to make it worth the factory's time
to custom fab them for you. And if they think you're going to be a one-time-
run, then you aren't going to get as good of a price as if you signed some
long-term production agreement (10,000 a month for 12 months, etc...),

He also didn't go about finding a fab in the best way.. he went to Alibaba
which is essentially the Amazon of factories... definitely not the "best
price" you can get.

~~~
cellshade
Since you seem to be familiar with this sort of thing, what _is_ the best way
to find a fab if not going to Alibaba?

~~~
Alupis
There is no specific place to go to... a lot of it simply comes from working
within the industry and learning the key players. My company doesn't buy/sell
electronics, but the factories operate more-or-less the same.

Going to Alibaba is like shopping on Amazon. You wouldn't go to Amazon to
purchase bulk (> 10,000) pieces of some item... you certainly aren't getting
the best deal. Amazon takes a cut (so does Alibaba), and retailers listing
there have catered their prices towards end-users (so significant mark-ups).

If it were me, I'd post on electrical engineering forums and ask who people
recommend for fab jobs. Sometimes a nice supplier/distributor will tell you
who they use for fab jobs (but a lot do tend to guard this).

Alibaba just isn't the best way to get the best price...

~~~
frozenport
Yeah and my cousin Vinny can get you a better deal, too bad you aren't family.

~~~
Alupis
> Yeah and my cousin Vinny can get you a better deal, too bad you aren't
> family.

I can appreciate your sarcasm here, but it's not constructive and doesn't
change the economics of custom fabrication.

These factories don't sit around waiting to get small-time jobs to fab a
handful of some custom components.

~~~
frozenport
Alibaba was a reasonable place to look, the other suggestions require insider
knowledge, and are significantly more speculative.

~~~
Alupis
A possible analogy:

Would you accept a consulting gig if it was a one-off job, required a 2 hour
commute in both directions, and you expected to be onsite for only 1 hour?
Maybe...

You might accept if you were really desperate to get any job, or you might
accept if your contract pays for your commute time and expenses. But if
neither of those conditions are met, you would probably turn it down as it
wouldn't be worth your time.

This is over-simplifying this a bit, but it's along the lines of how the
factories view this sort of thing.

The author is asking them to spend more time and expense tooling up than they
will in actual production (your 4 hour commute round-trip). If they were
already tooled for this component (you lived in the same city), then they'd be
more open and provide a better rate (you charging just your on-site fee). But
since those conditions are not met, they will make you foot the bill for
tooling (you charging for your commute and expenses), especially since the
likelihood of some other buyer coming along and commissioning this component
are very slim (the consulting gig is a one-off).

------
bsder
Talk to Sullins Connector Corp directly.
[http://www.sullinscorp.com/](http://www.sullinscorp.com/)

The last time I had a connector I needed, they took something they had off the
shelf, milled it, stuffed it with different pins, and charged me $100 for 5.

 _I_ _was_ _stunned_. I haven't had customer service that good in decades.

Really. Call them. Even better, take a factory tour.

They may not be able to do it, but they have 30 years of designs archived. One
of them will probably work.

~~~
sounds
Except he did. They declined. Maybe if he knew somebody higher up at Sullins?

~~~
bronson
They declined because, "we are currently phasing out our d-sub line and will
be going obsolete in June."

That's basically permanent.

------
userbinator
A quick search suggests that they're still made:

[http://www.connectworld.net/cgi-
bin/rrdata/DB19FS](http://www.connectworld.net/cgi-bin/rrdata/DB19FS) (female)

[http://www.connectworld.net/cgi-
bin/rrdata/DB19MS](http://www.connectworld.net/cgi-bin/rrdata/DB19MS) (male)

~~~
oasisbob
He bought all those ones:

[http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/01/28/in-search-of-the-
elu...](http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/01/28/in-search-of-the-elusive-
db19/)

------
Yetanfou
DB-25-connector, meet hacksaw and belt/disc sander. Welcome, DB-19 connector!

While this would be a no-go for a 'regular' product, it would be perfectly
acceptable for the niche application - floppy emulators for old personal
computers - these connectors are used for.

~~~
bwldrbst
I did pretty much exactly this a few weeks ago to make a DB-23 video cable for
an Amiga :]

------
fubarred
I worked in the nuclear industry a long time ago. The reason some parts are
expensive is the documentation (chain of ownership) and testing involved. Some
parts must be flame tested (set on fire and self-extinguish in X seconds), so
that 50% of the batch are destructively tested in order to meet specific
requirements. It doesn't justify excessive profiteering on a setup or per-part
basis, but there is reason for connectors costing $90/part.

~~~
aftbit
Do you have any nuclear industry war stories to share?

------
swamp40
I think you might be better off a) finding and contacting an original mfg who
still has the tooling, or b) making some kind of adapter board by pulling the
pins from a DB25 and soldering them onto a pcb.

I wouldn't be shocked if you paid them and got the first parts and had a
problem.

Then they will point to your lack of tolerance or chamfer specs or somesuch
and then want more money to modify the tool.

------
blackguardx
For a completely custom connector, that seems like super cheap NRE to me. I
work as an EE and have paid more than that on small run prototype stuff that
is simpler to manufacture than a connector (think prototype circuit boards).
Connectors require multiple sets of tooling and specialized processes unique
to the connector industry. Even getting the tooling for the simplest plastic
part is goig to be thousands of dollars.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
I have a package of DB25 connectors left over from a product I used to build
and sell that has slowly been whittled down over the years. It's because of
things like this that I have been reluctant to toss them out. At sometime in
the future I think they might be useful to me or someone else. Likewise the
bag of 50 Centronics connectors. They _have_ to be valuable sometime, right?

Or maybe I'm just a packrat.

------
greggman
This just reminds me. I wanted to buy a couple of extra allen wrenches for my
camera tripod just so I could put them in various bags and hopefully never be
without one.

Check Amazon...

1 wrench $6

100 wrenches $12

I now have a box of 100 allen wrenches all the same size.

~~~
RyJones
Give them away at the office as a reward for a job well done.

------
DangerousPie
Presumably the reason that the other factories did not make an offer was that
they would have had similar set up costs and already expected that the volume
wouldn't be large enough to make this viable...

------
tylerritchie
That's too bad: Steve Chamberlin appears to have taken the post down probably
due to unwarranted "UR DOIN IT WRONG" in his page comments.

There are a couple other comments [1] [2] that touch on this. But it does seem
like there are some shortcuts that could be taken with DB-25 connectors.
Anyone who's still manufacturing them (which may not be many) might be able to
modify their tooling to not add 6 pins on one side and not add the protective
cowling.

Is it a safe, strong connector? No.

Would it cost $11k in tooling? I have no idea I'm a biologist.

It'll be interesting to see what he settles on.

edit: Ha, he's already doing that:
[http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/01/designing-a-
db-19-su...](http://www.bigmessowires.com/2015/02/01/designing-a-
db-19-substitute/)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9012293#9012602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9012293#9012602)
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9012293#9012695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9012293#9012695)

------
fnordfnordfnord
Bargain for everything in China. It is the culture. They will haggle over the
price of anything. It's actually kind of fun once you get used to it.

------
daeken
I'd strongly recommend looking into 3d printing these. You could pretty easily
3d print a plastic version of the connector itself (and shell, if male), then
add aluminum tape to the inside if you need EMF protection. Then you just pop
in pins (which you can get at Fry's by the hundred for a couple bucks), and
you have a finished connector. A few hundred dollars in setup and you're done,
with a unit cost of under a dollar, all in.

~~~
Animats
None of the low-end 3D printers could hold the tolerances needed. Even a Form
1 isn't that precise.

Connector tolerances are very tight. That's why intermittent electrical
connections are mostly a thing of the past.

~~~
daeken
I regularly print tighter tolerances with an FDM printer (modified Makerbot
Replicator 2). D-sub connectors just aren't that tight; if you were printing
the pins themselves, it'd be different, but the plastic side of things is not
an issue at all.

~~~
Animats
For connectors where the pins are crimped to wires, then inserted into the
connector block, the hole into which each pin fits has a complex form. It has
to be shaped so that the pin clicks into place, but isn't pushed out by
ordinary connector insertion forces. FDM extruders extrude a thread bigger
than the tolerances required for that.

Getting a longer D-sub connector and machining the plastic down is more likely
to work. 3D printing isn't magic.

------
ajaimk
[http://www.digikey.com/product-
search/en?x=0&y=0&lang=en&sit...](http://www.digikey.com/product-
search/en?x=0&y=0&lang=en&site=us&keywords=db-19)

~~~
userbinator
Those are all DB25s that happen to have a part number starting with "DB-19".

------
largote
Do you need to support older hardware? Or is there a particular reason you
can't use DB-25 and just use 19 pins?

------
raldi
Good story, but I flagged it for the misleading title. Perhaps a less
sensational one would be, "Making new DB-19 cables is expensive."

------
recibe
The Chinese are tired of being paid a fraction of what citizens in developed
countries make for doing the same work.

This is a blog about how a citizen in a developed country is "shocked" at the
concept that other people should be paid a fair wage even if - gasp - they're
Chinese.

~~~
to3m
The phrase "shocked" doesn't occur in the post, so I'm not sure where that
term comes from. He does say that the quoted figure is more expensive than he
hoped for, which is reasonable, since he goes on to present a number of quick
calculations suggesting he can't justify purchasing them at that price.

