Tag Archives: Connectors

Shrouded vs. Non-Shrouded

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A connector isn’t a connector isn’t a connector. In the photo below, the original PCB was designed to have an unshrouded breakaway header, as shown in the inset on the right. I measured it. The entire header fits within the silkscreen outline.

However, as you can see, a shrouded header was used in that spot. While as designed, there was plenty of clearance between the header and the two capacitors and resister, the shroud for the substituted header covers all of the resistor and half of the capacitors.

You can prototype it this way, but it will never fly in production.

Duane Benson
Find the ghosts of Dawnstar

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/

Package Variants

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Cap under connector footprint Here’s another issue we see from time to time involving the old, familiar, 0.1″ pitch headers. Break away header When initially laying out the board, the footprint for the break-away header is used. It’s small and easy to use. The headers are cheap and easy and you don’t need to stock a bunch of different pin-counts.

That’s all fine and dandy until the next rev of the prototype when you decide to change to a shrouded header for the additional reliability and pin protection afforded by it. When making that change, don’t forget that the footprint with the shroud may very well be bigger than the break-away footprint.

Shrowded header In this particular case, it wouldn’t have mattered except for the capacitor that ended up under the shrouded header.

Duane Benson
Get out of my cap’s space, man

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/