Choosing power connectors

The two power connectors above look pretty similar. The one of the left looks shinier and fancier, but actually I don’t like it very much. This is because of the way that it is fitted onto the box you’ve made for your device.

You need to push the back of the connector into the box through the hole from the outside. So when you are soldering wires onto it you need to remember this, and also thread the retaining nut onto the wire that you are soldering into place. All of this adds up to make fitting a connector like this much more tricky. My experience has been that I get the first one right, and then get the second and third ones wrong, or vice versa.

The connector on the right fits from the inside of the box so you can solder it up first and then add it to the box afterwards, pushing the front of the connector through a hole and attaching the retaining nut from the outside. Which is much, much easier to do.

When you’re choosing connectors for a project it is well worth considering things like this.