rickfly
New Member
C&O transition era modeler.
Posts: 22 
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Post by rickfly on Feb 1, 2014 8:57:47 GMT -8
Just bought a dozen of these from Greenway Products. These are really expensive, but I like them. Is there any other source for edge connectors that may be a bit cheaper? Thanks.
Rick
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Post by notabob on Feb 2, 2014 9:31:47 GMT -8
Just bought a dozen of these from Greenway Products. These are really expensive, but I like them. Is there any other source for edge connectors that may be a bit cheaper? Thanks. Rick I haven't seen any that were reasonable in price. I solder short leads directly to the tortoise contact prior to mounting and then connect them to terminal strips that are located near the tortoise. On my layout, the tortoises use either 2 or 6 wire strips, depending on required wiring complexity. This gives me a similar degree of modularity and allows for easy swap out of the tortoise without soldering anything under the layout, should it ever fail. Terminal strips come out to about a $1 each for 12-position ones. So depending on how many wires you're running to your tortoises (between 2 and 8), you can wire up anywhere from 1.5 to 6 tortoises per $1 strip. Attachments:
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Post by oldmuley on Feb 2, 2014 10:03:46 GMT -8
There are a myriad of options out there, but unfortunately you're not going to find them cheap. Pretty much everything I've seen has been in the range of about $3/each. Several years ago I bought a bunch of 10 pin adapters from Digi-Key, since they were a little less expensive for some reason. I adapted them by installing some styrene shims in the #1 and #10 pin slots to make them fit without shifting. The price has probably gone up quite a bit since then.
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Post by Paul Cutler III on Feb 12, 2014 22:21:40 GMT -8
Edge connectors for Tortoise machines are a bad idea. If the wire is yanked by accident in one direction, they'll pop right off. If pulled in the other direction, they could break the Tortoise PCB.
One should always bring the wires to a terminal strip to anchor the wire properly. It isolates the Tortoise from any accidents when, say, shoving that heavy rolling tool box under the layout and snagging a wire.
Edge connectors make sense on something that is replaced routinely. But Tortoise machines don't need replacing much if at all. At my club, we've installed several hundred Tortoise machines in the past 15 years, and only one has failed... And that's because some joker drilled through the top of it when installing feeder wires. Other than that, we have never replaced a Tortoise. And when you've got hat kind of reliability, why get edge connectors?
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Post by nebrzephyr on Feb 22, 2014 13:14:57 GMT -8
Here's what I use. Why did I take this approach? Because I did not have a "complete" plan in place as far as eventual connections as I initially installed the Torts. I knew later I would be adding signaling, etc. By using these I did not have to crawl under the layout later with a hot soldering iron. Slip off the connector, add the new wires, and push back on the Tort. In the photo the "header" on the left is soldered to the Tort at the workbench prior to initial installation. YMMV Bob   |
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