The Electronic Connector Book by Davide Andrea is the book I wish I had when I first started out as a roboticist, and is the book I am happy to now have. I say this is a book, but it is a large tome of everything you ever wanted to know (and did not know you wanted to know) about connectors and how to use them.
The relevance of this book is emphasized by the recently released investigation details in the Francis Scott Key Bridge that collapsed in Baltimore after the Dali container ship crashed into it. A loose wire caused by an improperly connected terminal block connector may have been the cause of the blackout that lead to the collision, loss of life, and billions of dollars in damages.
There are 3 main parts to this book.
- Understanding Interconnects
- Approximately 200 pages all about connector characterization and their attributes.
- Interconnects Catalog
- Approximately 400 pages of thousands of connectors. Over the past 20 years I have had to work with many of these connectors from probably every category in this book. Robotics often covers a wide array of technologies making this information extra useful for robotics (compared to many other electronics industries). Having a book like this is very helpful for identifying and helping to select a connector series to use.
- Using Interconnects
- To me this was the primary part of the book that I enjoyed and why I think it is valuable. This book has about 100 pages of tutorials for how to design with connectors, assemble connectors, use the connectors and repair the connectors.
As mentioned above the third part of this book is the primary reason I like this book and am sharing this review. Below are two figures from the third section about how to assemble a crimp connector as well as how to assemble a solder cup connector. The book has far more examples of different types and subtypes of connectors than I want to count.
The book comes in two versions. A “Professional” version that is hard covered, color images, and 758 pages, and also an “Abridged” version that is soft cover, black and white, and only 648 pages long. I got the professional version and the color images are nice, I am not sure what sections are left out of the abridged version.
In addition to the book the website for the book https://connectorbook.com/ has some free useful tools for identifying connectors. I recommend you visit that site for help identifying a connector or to purchase the book.
Specific to the audience of the blog (and also for the author if he ever reads this) the main thing that I think is missing from this book is a subsection or a characterization for connectors that are designed to be manipulated by remote tooling and robotic manipulators.
Overall I congratulate the author on publishing this tome, and appreciate that I now have a reference book for myself as well as to give to junior engineers to learn how to design, assemble and maintains connectors (and terminal blocks).
