[time-nuts] Opera coordinator has resigned

[Jim Lux]

On 3/31/12 1:46 PM, J. Forster wrote:
> Remember, there are two varieties of SMA: Those with a gold plated center
> pin soldered onto the center conductor and those with a sharpened center
> conductor of 0.141 hard line.
>
> The latter are near junk, IMO.


Only if you're planning on multiple mates/demates.  The crimp on 0.141 
style works fine for the first couple mates.   Good inspection and 
gaging is needed to make sure you don't get little shreds of copper from 
when you sharpen the point, and that your tooling got the length of the 
"pin" correct.

It's sort of a "works once" scheme (like those head bolts or piston rod 
bolts that you can only torque once.  Once stretched, they can't be used 
again.)

They're pretty handy when building prototypes.  You get your big length 
of 141 and your little bending tool, the die set and crimper from Kings, 
and you can cable up stuff (once) pretty quickly and neatly.
If you take a cable off, you just throw it away (or cut the connectors 
off and use the remaining cable for something new)

But if you're going to take it apart and reassemble it.. yep.. you want 
the real captured gold plated machined center pin.  I use a lot of the 
semi-flexible or "formable" stuff from Tensolite and RF-Coax these days.