[TowerTalk] Parallel Connections

[Paul Christensen]

>"And industrial automation. Pretty much everything in the last 20-30 years has come with that kind of termination, whether plug/socket, or just soldered in terminal strip."

And...easy maintenance when needed.   Consider a 25+ multiconductor cable with lugs screwed down on blocks like a Cinch barrier strip.  To remove the equipment for bench testing requires a lot lug removal time.  For the last several years, almost all my home brew projects have used Phoenix connectors.   That same 25 conductor cable, spread across several Phoenix blocks can be removed in a few seconds.  

One negative side-effect of the PC-mounted Phoenix connector is that for instrumentation and audio applications, shielding wires must bond direct to the equipment chassis and not through a pin on the Phoenix connector.  That can create a so-called "Pin 1" problem that K9YC knows all too well. However, it's not as important for simple relay logic circuits or where opto-isolation is used ahead of active circuitry.

Paul, W9AC