Why rotary-tip on 4mm banana plugs?

[MrCAL]

Anyone used these style as sold by ab-precision?

I don’t know who ab-precision is, but the original article made by Stäubli (formerly Multi-Contact), part numbers in tggzzz’s post above, are excellent.

In addition to the benefits that tggzzz listed and mawyatt confirmed, they also have the unique ability to be mated plug-to-plug on the male side, since you can just shove one plug into the other, and still use the stacking jacks on the backs. Their light weight also makes them ideal for test leads made of thin wire, so that there isn’t a heavy plug dangling off a thin lead. I used them to make banana-to-DuPont cables, for example. The way that their spring force works makes them fit snugly in basically any jack, yet without being annoyingly hard to use in tight jacks.

The downsides are that they only make solder versions of them, and just as mawyatt said, they can snag when inserting them into certain jacks, so careful alignment is sometimes necessary.

But perhaps their resistance/voltage-drop are higher than other jacks?
The wall/tube seems thin and it's likely made of relatively low-conducting-metal, because it need to have a spring-property, unless they are made of a special copper-alloy-mix? Or will the gold-plating compensate for that?
Are they rated just as high? 16-32A?

[tggzzz]

Anyone used these style as sold by ab-precision?

I don’t know who ab-precision is, but the original article made by Stäubli (formerly Multi-Contact), part numbers in tggzzz’s post above, are excellent.

In addition to the benefits that tggzzz listed and mawyatt confirmed, they also have the unique ability to be mated plug-to-plug on the male side, since you can just shove one plug into the other, and still use the stacking jacks on the backs. Their light weight also makes them ideal for test leads made of thin wire, so that there isn’t a heavy plug dangling off a thin lead. I used them to make banana-to-DuPont cables, for example. The way that their spring force works makes them fit snugly in basically any jack, yet without being annoyingly hard to use in tight jacks.

The downsides are that they only make solder versions of them, and just as mawyatt said, they can snag when inserting them into certain jacks, so careful alignment is sometimes necessary.

But perhaps their resistance/voltage-drop are higher than other jacks?
The wall/tube seems thin and it's likely made of relatively low-conducting-metal, because it need to have a spring-property, unless they are made of a special copper-alloy-mix? Or will the gold-plating compensate for that?
Are they rated just as high? 16-32A?

19A, at the the voltages I previously noted.

Horses for courses; select the course then select the horse.

[tooki]

I don’t know who ab-precision is, but the original article made by Stäubli (formerly Multi-Contact), part numbers in tggzzz’s post above, are excellent.

In addition to the benefits that tggzzz listed and mawyatt confirmed, they also have the unique ability to be mated plug-to-plug on the male side, since you can just shove one plug into the other, and still use the stacking jacks on the backs. Their light weight also makes them ideal for test leads made of thin wire, so that there isn’t a heavy plug dangling off a thin lead. I used them to make banana-to-DuPont cables, for example. The way that their spring force works makes them fit snugly in basically any jack, yet without being annoyingly hard to use in tight jacks.

The downsides are that they only make solder versions of them, and just as mawyatt said, they can snag when inserting them into certain jacks, so careful alignment is sometimes necessary.

But perhaps their resistance/voltage-drop are higher than other jacks?

Their maximum current is not as high as the highest-current ones from Stäubli and Hirschmann, but still excellent, as tggzzz said.

Their very large contact area, and the fact that the contact itself is quite small (so even if the resistivity is higher, the total resistance is not) means the overall resistance is still very low.

The wall/tube seems thin and it's likely made of relatively low-conducting-metal, because it need to have a spring-property, unless they are made of a special copper-alloy-mix?

Beryllium copper according to Stäubli. (Good to know, should I ever need to file one down!) So definitely not a low-conductivity metal. (That is a weird assumption to make for a top-quality electrical connector.)

Or will the gold-plating compensate for that?

Gold is not used as contact plating for its conductivity — copper and silver are much better — but for its resistance to corrosion.

[coppice]

Gold is not used as contact plating for its conductivity — copper and silver are much better — but for its resistance to corrosion.

Gold plating is not even used when you want really good trouble free contact quality for small signals, such as with microphones, that tolerate a large number of insertion cycles. Things like rhodium alloys are used in places like the BBC where they want contacts that just work.

[tooki]

I thought rhodium is for high-current contacts, because that is what gold sucks at. (For example, Apple changed the plating on the Lightning connector — or maybe just on the power pins, I don’t remember — from gold to rhodium precisely because the gold plating was getting blitzed off due to arcing when hot-plugging/unplugging while charging.)

My understanding is that different gold alloy platings are used for different applications, including harder ones for high cycle counts.



Aaaaahahahhaahhaa the audiophools think rhodium has a “taint” to the sound: https://audioaddictsforum.com/thread/2181/rhodium-plating 😂

[artag]

I'd noticed that back-to-back feature, but haven't found it to be a benefit, as yet.

I encountered them as patch leads on an analogue computer at college. Since patch leads often have to join several nodes, the ability to arbitrarily stack them, as well as their compact size, made them useful.

RS components have sold some with a single spring like one of the bunched pins for years. It runs in a groove in the plug. They also sold a stacking version with a screw cable clamp. Staple of many UK schools and labs. The spring is inferior to bunched-pin but pretty effective, though I have found them loose in certain socket types. They seem now to have dropped the stacking type but have similar-looking plugs from Hirschmann with either bunched-pin or lantern contacts.

[artag]

Aaaaahahahhaahhaa the audiophools think rhodium has a “taint” to the sound: https://audioaddictsforum.com/thread/2181/rhodium-plating 😂

Lol. Probably even on the (digital) lightning connector.

What amuses me is that're worrying about conductivity, which is irrelevant compared with the length of wire it's connected to. What they SHOULD be worrying about is the possibility of a dissimilar metal (or metal/metal oxide) contact that rectifies or is otherwise nonlinear.

[mawyatt]

Anyone used these style as sold by ab-precision?

I don’t know who ab-precision is, but the original article made by Stäubli (formerly Multi-Contact), part numbers in tggzzz’s post above, are excellent.

In addition to the benefits that tggzzz listed and mawyatt confirmed, they also have the unique ability to be mated plug-to-plug on the male side, since you can just shove one plug into the other, and still use the stacking jacks on the backs. Their light weight also makes them ideal for test leads made of thin wire, so that there isn’t a heavy plug dangling off a thin lead. I used them to make banana-to-DuPont cables, for example. The way that their spring force works makes them fit snugly in basically any jack, yet without being annoyingly hard to use in tight jacks.

The downsides are that they only make solder versions of them, and just as mawyatt said, they can snag when inserting them into certain jacks, so careful alignment is sometimes necessary.

But perhaps their resistance/voltage-drop are higher than other jacks?
The wall/tube seems thin and it's likely made of relatively low-conducting-metal, because it need to have a spring-property, unless they are made of a special copper-alloy-mix? Or will the gold-plating compensate for that?
Are they rated just as high? 16-32A?

An advantage of these type connectors isn't high current use but their low thermal mass. The Banana Sockets in many Bench DMMs are often much warmer than ambient, so the connector large surface area and thin walled construction allow achieving thermal equilibrium with the sockets quicker than other Banana connector types, which benefits precision measurements.

Best,

[DavidKo]

I bought them at Bürklin.

In 4 wire connection I use them on sense wires and high power ones on another pair for easy recognition.

[Wrenches of Death]

We don't have crocodiles, but this state is ass deep in critters called "alligator mississippiensis". There's somewhere around a couple of million of them running loose here. The snout, jaws, and head of an American alligator are shaped noticeably differently than those of a crocodile. The standard  Mueller number 60 clip is an alligator clip. The Mueller number 85 clip is a crocodile clip

Since Mueller Electric was the actual inventor of the alligator clip, I would trust their nomenclature of the little beasties.

I suspect that if we were ass deep in crocodiles here, they would be called crocodile clips.

Oh, and if you're ever in the neighborhood, don't walk around at night without  a flashlight!

WoD

[tooki]

Yep, totally agree about the terminology! (And having been to north Florida many, many times, I can confirm that gators are everywhere there!)

Please fix the quoting in your reply, though. Your reply is inside the quote, and the quote is misattributed.

[thm_w]

There is also this style, I'm not sure if any major manufacturers make them:


The 4th style, IMO, is the best in terms of reliable low contact resistance as far as I've seen. I've had all the other styles degrade over time, even from major manufacturers. These multi spring style ones seem to hold up better? The downside is of course its a bit harder to insert.

Here you can see Hirschmann rate them 30A and 3mOhm contact resistance:
https://www.reichelt.com/ch/en/shop/product/4_0_mm_bunch_plug_solder_2_5_mm_yellow-106064


hah while I was searching I saw this photo:

[EvgenyG]

The 4th style, IMO, is the best in terms of reliable low contact resistance as far as I've seen. I've had all the other styles degrade over time, even from major manufacturers. These multi spring style ones seem to hold up better? The downside is of course its a bit harder to insert.

I want to second that, I've tried a few different styles and I think this one is the most reliable/durable for the money:
DELTRON COMPONENTS 550-0500 (there are variations of part numbers for different colours).
It does go in a bit harder but the contact is superior.

The OP's type, I was using that one for a while, until the thing snapped inside of the psu and took me hours to get little pieces out.

[tooki]

I’ve used many of the Deltron 553 series (the stackable banana) and they work well.