Inspect Female Connectors - Agilent Technologies 85057B User's And Service Manual

Use, Maintenance, and Care of the Devices
Visual Inspection

Inspect Female Connectors

Inspect the contact fingers in the female center conductor carefully. These can be bent or
broken, and damage to them is not always easy to see. A connector with damaged contact
fingers will not make good electrical contact and must be replaced.
NOTE This is particularly important when mating nonprecision to precision devices.
The female connectors in this calibration kit are metrology-grade, precision slotless
connectors (PSC). Precision slotless female connectors are used to improve accuracy. With
PSCs on test ports and standards, the accuracy achieved when measuring at 50 dB return
loss levels is comparable to using conventional slotted connectors measuring devices
having only 30 dB return loss. This represents an accuracy improvement of approximately
10 times.
Conventional female center conductors are slotted and, when mated, are flared by the
male pin. Because physical dimensions determine connector impedance, this change in
physical dimension affects electrical performance, making it very difficult to perform
precision measurements with conventional slotted female connectors.
The precision slotless connector was developed to eliminate this problem. The PSC has a
center conductor with a solid cylindrical shell, the outside diameter of which does not
change when mated. Instead, this center conductor has an internal contact that flexes to
accept the male pin.
3-4 85057B