Warning: 1000 hours of bench testing taught me a hard lesson about connector pins

I hit 1000 hours of bench time last month and realized over half my callbacks were from bent pins on MIL-spec connectors I rushed. A cheap 10x loupe from Amazon caught 3 bad pins before install yesterday. How many hours did it take you to get religious about magnification checks?

2 comments

2 Comments

graym4917d ago

Learned that one around hour 200 myself.

amyh2116d ago

You ever catch a pin that looked fine to the naked eye but the loupe showed it was barely hanging on? That's the stuff that'll make you a believer real quick. I keep a 10x in my pocket now and check every single pin before I mate a connector. Saves me from chasing intermittent shorts later. Also started using a pin straightener set for the ones I can salvage instead of scrapping the whole connector.