Comment by techdragon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by techdragon | Hacker News Reader

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I went down this road a bit too for a project where I wanted to minimise the enclosure complexity, keep everything in and out of the box to nice circular conectors... and yeah it was tempting to get into the MIL-DTL-38999 train, but I needed some high amperage low voltage DC stuff for power (it was a 3d printer project and I needed stuff like 8-14 Amps and 24-48V DC for various heaters, and a lot of these are nice for high density data, but its hard to find one that can do multiple higher power connections. I ended up giving up since I would find so many that got close but in the end the project form factor changed due to cooling issues (larger enclosure for more airflow due to insufficient fan static pressure)

They are definitely cool connectors though if you only need a bunch of data and don't need the higher power density I needed at the time.

The size 12 contacts can do 15-25A. There's e.g. the Amphenol size 25 / 24 connection version, with 12 high current contacts and 12 smaller contacts.

There's not too many that have a variety of pin sizes and that are military qualified, though. And it's not cheap stuff, for sure.

Yeah I probably could have explained a bit more, I did find connections that could do it but it was never quite right in terms of a size pin count or cost trade off for this specific project. The standard absolutely has options for higher current but it comes with a smaller pool of available suppliers making those parts and thus they cost more. I wasn’t prepared to spend $50 Australian on a single pair of connectors for this project, especially since due to wiring limitations I’d have probably had to get two pairs.

They firmly entered my mental toolbox as a go to for a flexible circular connector when I don’t need to join existing physical interfaces like Ethernet or higher speed USB where the signal reliability is potentially worth just using a sealed socket with matching circular screw on connector, but for the sort of thing where I’d have made up a DB9 or DB25, I’m definitely going to be reaching for these again in future (I did get a few of them and used the solder cup versions to avoid needing the crimping tools and the associated extra costs)

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