male to male pwm cables?

VEX V5 General Discussion Technical Discussion
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Hey forum, I was wondering if you knew anywhere hey made male to male PWM cables. I bought a series of parts to amp up my vex rocket launcher, and some of them have female ends, which I cant connect to the Vex microcontroller…

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I like to use these to convert regular PWM cables for this purpose.

Cheers,

  • Dean
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Thanks Quazar, have you bought from this site before? I dont like being scammed :smiley:

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Several times, and exchanged email with the owner.
Seems as on-the-level as any small web retailer I’ve come across.

Cheers,

  • Dean
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Dean,

Thanks for the lead! I’d been poking around for a source for servo connector sets of both genders.

Have you, perchance, used either of the crimping tools Hansen

sells? My plan is to make many of the cables and harnesses for my current project (a robot that plays catch) myself, both to get the lengths I want and so I can use a variety of insulation color patterns for easy tracing and identification in bundles.

FWIW, I’ve used generic header pins, such as:
[Break Away Male Headers - Swiss Machine Pin - PRT-00117 - SparkFun Electronics
as “gender-benders” for static devices and have been satisfied with their performance. Whether they’d stay well connected in dynamic devices, such as robots, I don’t know. I’ve also made serviceable male connectors for Vex controllers by wire wrapping 22AWG solid to such pins. (Females were not that hard to find (Now, there’s a line not often spoken when I was in engineering school. ;)), but the traditional practice is to put header pins on boards, so I was having trouble finding free-hanging male connectors.) When I didn’t yet know of a source for male servo connectors, my plan was to use crimped females and (heat shrink over wire wrapped) male header pins as my cabling technology.

TIA for whatever you can offer in the way of guidance for crimpers,
Eric](Break Away Male Headers - Swiss Machine Pin - PRT-00117 - SparkFun Electronics)

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sells?

Yes, I bought the deluxe crimper from them, and I have used it with a variety of connector pins with good results (0.1" header contacts, DB9-type contacts, and Tyco CPC contacts).

It sometimes over-squeezes the contact, bending the crimp-area slightly, but it is easy to straighten out with some long-nosed pliers. I’ve never had it crimp so tight that the wire is cut, and never so loose that the wire could pull out, so I put up with the occasional bending.

The main advantage with the male crimp contacts is that they are slightly longer than the machine pins, so they will stay connected better and will not work their way loose as easily.

For experimenting and prototyping, I use a lot of [these individual wire jumpers from SparkFun. You wouldn’t want to use them for a robot in the field, but they are great for experimenting with various non-Vex sensors that may not have the same signal arrangement.

Cheers,

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