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12 - Interconnecting, wiring, and cabling for electronics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

I. R. Walker
I. R. Walker
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Introduction

Among the most common problems encountered when dealing with electronic items are those caused by faulty contacts, connectors, wires and cables. For example, bad solder joints are among the most frequent causes of failures in electronic devices in general. In any given electronic system, the most unreliable components will be its connectors and cables. (Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the number of connector problems that occurred during the Apollo space program was greater than that of all other problems combined.) More specifically, faulty connectors and cables are an important source of trouble in experimental work, in the form of unreliable measurements and wasted time.

Information on this subject is widely dispersed. The purpose of the following chapter is to bring together knowledge about these mundane but troublesome items from some of the various scattered sources.

Some contact, connector, wire, and cable problems are:

  1. (a) excessively high or low resistances, or complete open or short circuits,

  2. (b) noisy contacts (perhaps in the form of 1/f noise),

  3. (c) production and reception of electromagnetic interference (including crosstalk between nearby wires and cables),

  4. (d) leakage currents over insulators in high-impedance circuits,

  5. (e) noise produced as a result of cable vibrations in high-impedance circuits (“microphonics”),

  6. (f) nonlinear I–V characteristics of poor-quality contacts (i.e. they can become non-ohmic – this may lead to interference with sensitive measurements due to rectification of electromagnetic noise in the environment, and also signal distortion),

  7. (g) reflections on cables at radio (and particularly microwave) frequencies, owing to impedance mismatches,

  8. (h) arcing and corona discharge at contacts, and in cables and connectors, at high voltages,

  9. […]

Type
Chapter
Information
Reliability in Scientific Research
Improving the Dependability of Measurements, Calculations, Equipment, and Software
 , pp. 413 - 486
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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