Graham, Unless the boards are purely for prototype use, or you have a pneumatic / hydraulic press and the proper tooling / dies, my recommendation is that you find an assembly house that has an established press-fit capability and have them install the connectors for you. Since the board quantity is small, the cost of having someone install them for you (and do it properly the first time) would be relatively insignificant. Our experience with manual insertion of press-fit, especially using arbor presses, has not always been good (they tend to chatter as pressure is applied, causing the connector pins to ratchet into the plated hole rather than slide smoothly into the hole in a single motion). Also, unless the tooling is correct, the platen tends to come down slightly off-parallel to the circuit board - resulting in an improperly installed connector. Bob Cooke -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Collins Graham Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 12:59 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] press fit connectors Hello Technet! A question for the press fit connector gurus out there. We are looking at a job that uses a couple of 160 pin press fit connectors, and I've never pressed connectors (yet). We aren't going to be building a lot of these, so I'm trying to figure out what the minimal tooling I can get away with would be. I am assuming that I will need: - some support tooling to hold the board and prevent the pressing operation from destroying it. - tooling to hold the connector and distribute the load over the connector - a press - will a manual press do? Assuming the board is properly designed (a fair assumption as it's being produced elsewhere already), is there anything else I need? Is a flat plate with holes matching up with the pin locations sufficient for the base? Thanks, and have a good weekend! regards, Graham Collins Process Engineer, Northrop Grumman Canada Corporation Halifax (902) 873-2000 ext 6215 --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 -----------------------------------------------------