Electronic – the purpose of this disk over a Samtec connector

modelpcb-design

With beautification in mind I decided to attach 3D-STEP models to elements on my PCB.

One of them is a connector from Samtec. They do provide a STEP models for a download, but it was immediately suspicious to me, that the preview had this weird disc over the connector. At that moment I thought it was some kind of glitch and proceeded downloading STEP model regardless.

See the image below:
Connector preview

Attaching the downloaded STEP model I was surprised by this disc again. Turns out, it was also exported into STEP model along with the connector. Unfortunately, this serves bad for the purpose of "beautification" 🙂

Questions are:

  • What is the purpose of this disk?
  • Is there any way to download a STEP model of Samtec connector without this disk?

For a reference, the connector is QSH-030-01-F-D-A-K

Best Answer

This hasn't been explicitly mentioned yet, but you got a disc because you asked for one.

It's a Polyimide film pad, and specified by the last code in your part: -K. The purpose of this pad is so the vacuum pick-and-place machine has something to hold the component on. It needs a flat surface big enough for the vacuum head, as already shown by Jeroen3 and DKNguyen. For manual manufacturing, you don't need the film pad. But some automated lines can't pick up the parts if there's no flat surface provided.

QSH-030-01-F-D-A-K has the pad, QSH-030-01-F-D-A does not.

030-01 says how many positions and the lead style. The other codes:

  • -F: 3u plating
  • -D: double rows
  • -A: alignment pins
  • -K: Polyimide film pad

See the QSH configurator. Find your new, padless STP files there too.

QSH-030-01-F-D-A

Polyimide (also known under the brandname Kapton) is stable for a wide temperature range and a good electrical isolator, making it ideal for this purpose.

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