Electronics/wire connection question

#1

I have quite a few small servos at school (the small ones, like in the picture below). The problem is, teenagers are not very careful and when dismantling circuits we make in lessons they are pulling the cable rather than the black connector. This is resulting in many of the wires being pulled out of the black connector.

My question is, what are they called and is it easy for me to reconnect/crimp/ or attach them to new ones? They need to be female connectors as the boards they connect them to have pins.

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Thanks!

#2

This is the sort of thing. You could try putting some heat-shrink over them to make them more child-proof.

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#3

Du pont connectors.

In theory they are nice and easy to crimp and we have all the bits in the space

In practice they’re a pain in the f*cking ass.

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#4

Agree with Pete. One way to do it is buy cheap servo extension leads and cut the leads/splice the plug onto the servo. Add a little heat shrink and they work well

Courty

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#5

Thanks for the replies.

The idea of getting servo extensions and using heat shrink sounds like the best idea. That way replacing the extension will be simple if they pull the wires.

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#6

Might be worth picking out different servos in future, we have similarly careless students at work and this doesn’t really happen, in fact when servos break I usually pull the cable off and is usually snaps of inside the servo rather than the connector off the cable.

Sounds like the connector is weak.

Also recrimping dupont connectors is a massive pain in the ass.

#7

I need the cheapest servos, and it’s only so they can program something to move. They are only used for a few lessons a year, so I can’t justify buying more expensive ones.

#8

Also, the recrimping will be a student job. I have many students who want to do boring stuff like that.

#9

TBF we bought cheap ones too, Oomlout used to sell bags of 25 for teaching, but I guess all I was saying is that it they aren’t usually that much of an issue, so it could be a bad batch.

#10

in my experience crimping Dupont connectors isn’t too difficult. I use a Pa-09 tool for this

#11

It was after one lesson that I told the class ro dismantle, 3 got broken because they pulled the wire rather than the plastic connector. The next class I told them to pull the connector and not the wire and had none broken.

I just need to remember to tell teach class how to dismantle correctly.

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#12

if you want them to be more safe in teens hands, you can pour some hot glue in the back of connector, wires side.
Then fit a small piece of heat shrink and warm with hot air so that glue melts and heat shrink stays put on the cable.
The glue will keep everything together even if the cable is pulled (well… most of the times)

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