An appeal to Andy at Ultimarc

[Sir Headless VII]

I just spent the last several hours crimping and putting together a 2 connectors for the aimtracks that I am making. This was THE most tedious and frustrating thing I have done in the construction of my entire cabinet. The crimps turn out poorly, or more often the wires just snap after all of the fiddling around you have have to do to get them crimped, into the receptacle, and plugged into the board. To give you an idea of how it went I ordered 50 of the connectors, I figured why not buy an insane amount of them so I can be sure I will get it and have some left over (maybe I can make some for people in need or something). There are 7 left after making the 2 parts. So I ask you, could you please include a wiring harness for the 5-pin connector when someone orders one of your new aimtrack boards. This is not for me, I just finished and if they don't work they don't work, but the parts to create the wiring harness (less the wires) are 13 cents retail. The actual crimping tool for me to do it properly however costs $285.09 and 5 pre-crimped wires would cost $30.50 (almost the cost of the pcb set) plus shipping ($12). The extra 5 buttons on the gun are an advertised feature of the aimtrack but actually getting them to work on this connector without a wiring harness is either extremely expensive to impossibly frustrating.   

[isucamper]

I'm sure you'd be pissed to hear he does supply a harness with the guncon kit he sells.  I have two aimtraks, one in a PS1 guncon and one in andy's guncon.  It took me about 4 hours to get the aimtrak installed in the ps1 gun, and that was without messing with getting the extra button wired up.  It took about 15 minutes to get it installed in Andy's gun, including the third button.  

For those on the hedge, spring for Andy's kits.  Its not worth the headaches otherwise.

EDIT:  Sorry, thinking about this some more, I can't remember it the kit comes with a harness for all 5 buttons.  I know he supplied a way for hooking the 3rd button up to the 5 pin connector, as that is how my second gun is set up, but I don't remember what it was now.    

[Paul Olson]

I have one of the older boards, so I just have the solder pads. You can crimp those pins easily with these $10 D-Sub crimpers: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103683

Also, if anyone wants to buy pre-wired connectors, look at sites that sell robotics and R/C hobby parts. I have seen the 5 wire connectors for 3-4 dollars.

[Donkbaca]

I agree. It would be easier to solder to a board without the pins than to mess with them

[MonMotha]

The connector appears to be compatible with the very common Molex "Picoblade" series.  You may be able to find pre-crimped assemblies under this name more easily.  Check robotics sites and hobbyist electronic sites.

I doubt you could crimp those pins with the $10 "D-Sub Crimper" that everybody has without tearing your hair out.  While those crimpers are pretty darned amazing for their price (they'll crimp almost anything of the right size with reasonable reliability), the Picoblade contacts are just too small.  I have an Engineer, Inc. PA-09 and it crimps stuff down in that size pretty readily as well as anything the "D-Sub Crimper" can do, and it does a better job, too.  They're about $55-65 and very versatile.  There's a PA-20, too, for larger stuff.

Sparkfun has the PA-09 as their part number TOL-10219.
iheartengineering has the PA-09 and PA-21 mid-size here.

I wouldn't advocate buying one of these just for this, but if you crimp connectors semi-regularly, I've found these to be amongst the best options in this price range.

[Paul Olson]

iheartengineering also sells them through Amazon. I think I will pick up a pair of those. I do a lot of crimping, so it will be worth the investment.

If you don't do a lot of crimping, the D-Sub crimpers will definitely do the job. Just look how the pin fits in the crimper. The prongs for wire insulation are very narrow, so you need to make sure to position them properly in the crimper.

Look closely at the crimper. It is actually 2 pieces. One half is to crimp the tongs around the bare wire, the other half is to crimp them around the insulation. If you position the pin so insulation tongs are only in the inner half of the insulation part, it will crimp just fine. The pin will start to roll a little when you squeeze, so the crimp will look a little odd around the insulation, but it is strong, and it will fit fine in the housing.

Better tools are always a good option, but this will work if you just need to do a few pins.

[MonMotha]

I've attempted to crimp Molex Picoblade terminals with the Radio Shack D-Sub crimper (I have one).  It's an exercise in frustration.  Even if you can manage to get the contact positioned reasonably (the length of the entire terminal is about the same as the thickness of the crimp die, so good luck), getting the wire into it and getting the crimper cycled without things moving around is almost impossible.  There's no way to hold the terminal in position as you move the crimp dies.  Those things are TINY!

I certainly wouldn't say it can be done "easily".  These aren't your grandma's 0.1" KK terminals.  Perhaps I'd say "it can be done."

If you do manage to get it done, it should hold reasonably, though.  That crimper has a height sufficient to hold on to AWG28, according to the labeling on mine, at least.

Unless I crossed that Multicomp part to the wrong series...  If it's a different series, it may be easier to do.

[Kevin Mullins]

I'd roll'em with a pair of needlenose pliers, add a wisp of solder and call it good .... 

[loppydog]

I soldered my wires directly to the pins.  It took about 5 mins and if I ever need to take them apart I will just break out the good old soldering iron.

[pinballwizard79]

http://www.arcadeguns.com/

$168 = two guns & 0 minutes invested

[Paul Olson]

Sorry for the bad viewing angle; I didn't have a Tripod with me. Hopefully this will help someone trying to crimp these little pins with the cheap D-Sub crimpers.

[AndyWarne]

It was never intended originally that we would support the 5-pin connector until we have the complete retail guns, and the first batch of modules did not have the connector fitted at all. We fitted the big 0.1 in connector for the trigger and one other control to make this easy for users to wire up. What I overlooked is that if the connector or solder pads are there some people will want to use them and I could not really state "no we dont support their use". The retail guns will only have this one connector and not the other 0.1 in connector. But these are assembled in a factory of course with the proper crimp tool. For end-users this tiny connector is not ideal I admit.
I will see what can be done, we should be able to get some assembled harnesses from the people assembling the complete guns.

[MPH]

Just a quick comment about crimping pins, etc. I ran into similar frustrations with crimping leads for the Pac-Led 64.

I had bare-wire devices from another vendor and nothing Andy has would have helped me with that, so ordering pre-crimped connectors was not really an option. I went through several trial-and-error failures of 0.1" crimps from electronics shops in my area before ordering a matched set of IDE style headers and crimps from JameCo (based in California). Later, I ordered a proper crimp tool.

So, overall it was a big P.I.T.A. to make those connectors, but it was infinitely easier once I had the properly matched parts and a good crimp tool. The moral of my story is that building these machines is not easy on a good day, nor quick by any means. There are various alternatives to putting together some parts versus others. Sometimes doing some homework ahead of time will pay off when you start doing the actual work. I personally had to learn this lesson the hard way!

All that aside, I hope that at some point Andy will develop a version of the Pac-Led 64 with screw terminals. 

[Donkbaca]

Alternatively, Andy, maybe you could just sell the board the way it used to be, without the harness connector, that way people can solder straight to the board, I think that would be easier than the pins.

In reality though, there really isn't much of a need for anything other than reload and trigger, so its not a huge deal

[Bender]

Paul, thanks for the video!  

I can afford a pair of those but the other ones, for like $300, forget about it!

I just redid my wiring and wanted to do my own harnesses for a U-HID and PACLED so I did like 100 of those little f#$%ers by hand with needlenose pliers, wish I this thread had been up a little sooner

[Dervacumen]

I'd roll'em with a pair of needlenose pliers, add a wisp of solder and call it good .... 

I've found this to be the quickest and most cost effective method but I skip the solder part depending on the application.  For example I'm building a one time use cable and need to crimp 3 wires.  I don't go through the 5 minutes of warm up and set up for my soldering equipment.  For longer term applications I solder as well.  I crimp something this size maybe 20 times a year.  Using needle nose pliers instead of the D style crimper is just a little easier.  Same concept though.