_Many of my previous blogs have referred to the design or products used in interconnection and cable assemblies. This week I want to talk about the standards used in wire and cable assembly.

Many people working in electronics assembly design & manufacture are familiar with the IPC 610 Standard (Acceptability of Electronic Assemblies) however; the dedicated standard for Cable & Wire Harness Assemblies is IPC/WHMA-A-620.

Many of you will be aware of the standard and very familiar with the acceptability requirements but there are some myths and misconceptions' regarding what is acceptable and what is not.

With this in mind I have a small test for you. The following questions are taken from the IPC Training DVD Seven Deadly Sins of cable assembly. Let's see how you get on, there is no price just the smug satisfaction of being a "know it all" if you get all the questions right.

Fourteen correct answers are the minimum requirement for a pass in the official IPC Exam.

Here is a link to the questions >>

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As first reported by my colleagues over the pond @ www.interconnectionworld.com, the FIA have released a white paper on the use of CCA (Copper Clad Aluminium) cables in Ethernet cables (pdf).

In the last couple of years those of us in the networking interconnection industry have seen the introduction of CCA cables largely because of the downward pressure customers have on prices, and in no small account to the fact that copper prices have been going through the roof.

CCA is as the name suggests it's a small amount of copper bulked up with aluminium to create the 24 AWG required for most Ethernet applications.  We in the business have known for some time that CCA cables do not perform as well as pure copper conductors and now the FIA have come out and shown us the facts and it looks quite ugly.

In short the report is scathing over the performance of CCA cables and warns over the use of them on PoE networks.  Long-term life span and network data through-put bandwidth are seemingly highly compromised.

Now at this point I have to declare an interest.  We so supply CCA Cables alongside pure copper cables, simply because many clients want a cost-effective solution for today that saves them money in the short term, baring in mind the economic situation.  However, we know that copper conductors are better and always make the case for them.  Hopefully this new FIA report will help us to educate our customers and avoid us all using scare tactics and focus on the pure facts.

A copy of the report can be found here: http://www.fia-online.co.uk/pdf/Whites/wp-IAN002-01.pdf

Ultimately it is not that our customer have been cheap to take the low cost cables it is simply our job to educate them of the benefits to steering away form CCA.  This report will make our argument based on fact and be very hard to resist.

If you use power then you use the IEC connector. It's been around for a while now, since 1970 to be precise. As mentioned in previous blog posts, good design stands the test of time, that's why they are still around. They do the job really well.

There is usually a little confusion around the connector types and their uses. So to keep things simple for this blog post I am only going to talk about the IEC 60320 series. That's the C-Series to you and me!

Here is a list of connectors and their common uses:


C1/C2 connector  used on electric shavers and other low voltage devices, not in use so much these days, normally replaced by the DC connector.  C5/C6 connector (Clover Leaf or Mickey Mouse, pictured right) used on laptop power supplies and portable projectors, and on the Apple desktop computer iMac G4.


C7/C8 connector. This connector is often used for small cassette recorders, battery / mains operated radios, some full size audio-visual equipment, laptop computer power supplies, video game consoles, and similar double-insulated appliance.

C13/C14 connector. The most popular of all power connectors. Most desktop computers use the fifteen-amp panel-mounting C14 inlet to attach the power cord to the power supply, as do many monitors, printers and other peripherals.

C15/C16 connector. Some electric kettles and similar hot household appliances like home stills use a supply cord with a C15 connector, and a matching C16 inlet on the appliance; their temperature rating is 120 °C rather than the 70 °C of the similar C13/C14 combination. The official designation in Europe for the C15/C16 connector is a 'hot condition' connector.

C19/C20 connector. Earthed, 16 A, polarized. This connector is used for some IT applications where higher currents are required, as for instance, on high-power workstations and servers, UPSs, PDUs, large network routers and switches and similar equipment. It is rectangular and has pins parallel to the long axis of the connector face.

So there you have it IEC connectors explained. I hope you found this guide useful and has gone some way to making sense of all the connectors out there!

The protesters outside St Paul's have been making a lot of headlines recently and creating a discussion point around the nature of capitalism and how the economy works.

These are far too big and important issues to go into in my humble blog post, however I did want to raise the interesting point of how we the consumer can drive big business to do more in terms of reducing the impact on our environment.

I was interested to see that www.epeat.net has been set up with the view of identifying manufacturers that have products with more environmentally-friendly features. This is an outcome of consumers wanting to know who is doing more to protect the environment and therefore create the real link between companies that care about their consumers.

I very much believe that the consumers of today and tomorrow will get better, more environmentally friendly, electronics simply because they choose to buy from the companies seen to be doing more. There are already some very good examples out there - for example, Samsung producing LED's with no mercury and 50% less power consumption.

This to me is how capitalism, and therefore the consumer, can be a positive force. If we avoid bad companies and move towards the harder working companies through natural selection the best companies will survive and thrive.

Now here is a small video to illustrate my point and some new technology.