Connectors, by pitch and way count.

A screw terminal is bought by its pitch, and the pitch is the distance between the centres of two neighbouring pins. Six pitches are carried, from 2.54 mm for signal wiring up to 7.62 mm for wire to four square millimetres, plus a barrier strip on a 9.5 mm pitch for benches that want the screw on top and the wire coming in from the side. Way counts run in steps of one on every family, so a nine-way is a stock line and not a special.

The wire range is the maker's, for a single stripped conductor or a ferruled one. A rising clamp lifts a plate onto the wire as the screw is tightened, so a bare stranded wire is held over its whole cross-section; the sheet says rising clamp on every line because that is the only clamp we carry in this family. The current and voltage next to it are printed on the part or in its datasheet, and they are quoted as the maker's figure and nothing else.

Two families on the sheet, 5.0 mm and 5.08 mm, look identical on a bench and are not, and the difference is the whole subject of the section on look-alikes below. The same is true of 3.5 mm and 3.81 mm. If your board was laid out from a datasheet, the pitch on the datasheet is the pitch to order.

A pluggable block is two parts, and a quote for one always carries two lines: the header soldered to the board and the plug that carries the wires. They are ordered in the same pitch and the same way count, and they are boxed separately because a bench that repairs equipment wants plugs by the box and headers not at all.

Headers are carried straight and right-angle, and on the 5.08 mm family with or without a flange for a screw-locked plug. Plugs are carried with a screw clamp or a push-in clamp; the push-in takes a ferruled wire without a tool and a bare wire with a small screwdriver in the release slot. The maker's current and voltage figures on the sheet are for the mated pair, and the lower of the two parts' figures always governs.

Within a family on this sheet, every plug fits every header of the same pitch and way count. Across makers, a plug of the same pitch usually enters another maker's header but the latch or the flange may not engage, and the quote says which of ours has been checked against which, when you ask.

Circular connectors on the sheet are listed by thread size, contact count and coding. The coding is a key moulded into the insulator that stops an A-coded plug entering a D-coded socket; the two are carried separately and the sheet says which is which on every line. Sides are the cable plug, the cable socket and the panel socket with a rear nut, and each is its own box.

The IP figure on this family is the maker's and applies to the mated pair with the coupling nut tight; an unmated socket without its cap is open to the weather, and the caps are a separate line. Field-wireable versions with screw contacts are carried in M12 for a bench that terminates its own cable on site; the moulded versions on the other lines come from the maker as loose shells and contacts, not as leads, because we do not assemble.

Cable diameter matters as much as contact count: a field-wireable shell clamps a range of cable and a cable outside that range will not seal, whatever the IP figure says. Give the outside diameter of the cable on the part list and it goes on the quote.

Two very different families share this bin because both are rectangular and both come apart into shells, contacts and hoods. The D-shaped connectors are listed by way count and density, with solder-cup contacts as stock and crimp as ordered-in; hoods are metal or plastic and a panel-mount version with a threaded stand-off is carried in the standard-density sizes.

The heavy-duty inserts are the panel builder's line: an insert with screw or crimp contacts, a hood on the cable side, a housing on the panel side, and a lever or two to lock them. Every one of those is a separate line on the quote, and a complete connector is five or six lines. We list them that way on purpose, because a bench that has the hoods and only needs inserts should not be paying for hoods.

Contacts are sold by the box in the wire size they crimp to, and they do not cross between the two families. The maker's current figure is per contact and drops as the insert fills, exactly as the datasheet shows it, and we quote the datasheet figure without rounding it up.

Every connector line on a Micronoxs quote carries a code built from four segments, and the code is the description compressed: TB-508-06-V is a screw terminal block on a 5.08 mm pitch, six ways, vertical wire entry. PL-381-08-P and PH-381-08-R are a pluggable plug with push-in clamp and its right-angle header, both on 3.81 mm and both eight ways.

The code is ours and travels on the quote and the packing list. The maker's own number is written beside it on every line, so a purchasing office can check one against the other and a repair bench can find the datasheet.

When you send a maker's number we do not carry, the cross-reference comes back as a Micronoxs code plus a list of every measurement that differs. Pitch and way count are checked first, then wire range, then rated current and voltage, then the physical form; a match on the first two with a difference on the third is reported as exactly that, not as an equivalent.