What Are High Density Connectors?

The medical market has an increasing demand for high-density connectors. The irreversible trend of connectors in the medical field is getting smaller, lighter, and more ergonomic. This trend strongly drives the demand for high-density connectors. These requirements will also face a series of standards and customer solutions, but providing the correct solution is not as simple as putting a PIN needle into an existing medical connector. Due to the combination of International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) specifications and safety regulations in other regions, designing high-density connectors that are not bulky is often a challenging task.

1. Some knowledge of high density connectors

A high-density connector is a connector that has a large number of individual contacts such as PIN pins in a relatively small connector body. There is no obvious boundary between standard connectors and high density connectors, but the naming of high-density connectors is usually defined by having a larger number of contact points in the same housing size. High-density connectors are designed to have more PIN pins than connectors with the same housing size.

2. Strong growth in demand for high density connectors

The growing demand for high-density connectors is driven by many factors, with more requirements for size, weight, and functionality. Component size and weight have long been key factors in many military and aerospace applications. And due to the increasing popularity of portable and patient wearable devices, high-density connectors are now becoming more important in the medical market. There are more and more medical connector manufacturers.

By increasing the contact density of the connector, design engineers can improve performance while maintaining the same size and minimizing additional weight. The high-density contact design can also prevent too many pins from causing the connector to be bloated and difficult to operate. Humanized operation is especially important for medical equipment with high requirements, such as patient monitoring and imaging equipment.

In order to respond to the increasing demand of the higher density connector market, many manufacturers are developing standard, off-the-shelf high-density connector solutions. This solution is effective and feasible when the connector needs to meet a specific application and the output is limited. This challenge is currently being addressed in two ways. The first is to develop a standard high-density connector, which uses a modular contact system to meet various application requirements with standard components. Second, when the standard product still cannot meet the demand, design a customized solution based on the existing contact system, which not only shortens the time, but also reduces the investment and risk.