Peltola connector

schematic drawing of Peltola connector components

The Peltola coaxial connector was developed by Ron Peltola at Tektronix for in-house use. These connectors are used extensively inside 7000-series scopes for all coaxial inter-board signal wiring and plug-ins as well as in some other instruments of the era, such as the 212, 465B, or many TM500 plugins.

According to the Tektronix website,

The Male coaxial connector consists of the RG-174 coax center conductor as the male pin, with the braided shield pressed between two eyelets, part number 210-0775-00 (smaller one) and part number 210-0774-00 (larger one). The outer eyelet is then "dimpled" to secure the eyelet-shield-eyelet combination.

The Female (circuit board mounted) connector consists of 2 pieces. In the center is the socket pin connector, part number 136-0252-07 and the connector recepticle (with 3 circuit board mounting tabs), part number 131-1003-00.

The tool used to swedge the two pieces of the Peltola together was custom-made, tool-by-tool in the Tek machine shop. They began with an inexpensive, common parallel-jaw fish cleaning pliers. The two opposing jaws were replaced by a new set, the end of each machined with a "mouse hole", one the width of the outside diameter of the larger eyelet, the other the width of the outside diameter of the cable. The smaller eyelet was placed over the end of the stripped cable and the braid spread out over the outside and trimmed off. Then the larger eyelet was positioned over the end of the smaller one, the tool carefully put into place, and the handles squeezed to press the eyelets together with the braid trapped between. That was all. There was no further dimpling step.

The Peltola shares simplicity and economy with the RCA phono connector common on stereo systems and the "F" connector, commonly used for television antenna connections. It's certain that the Peltola wins as the cheapest, simplest and highest-performance of the three.

Note that the shield may be at a non-ground potential. For example, the two connections between the interface board & readout board on the 7834 have their shields connected to the +15 V rail.

Patents that may apply to Peltola connector

Page	Title	Inventors	Filing date	Grant date	Links
Patent US 3742425A	Coaxial cable connector for circuit board	Ron Peltola • Richard F Guarnero	1970-12-07	1973-06-26	Peltola connector
Patent US 3879103A	Coaxial cable connector for circuit board	Ron Peltola • Richard F Guarnero	1973-03-19	1975-04-22	Peltola connector

Documents

• Peltola Connector Repair Kit Datasheet (OCR)

Pictures

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  Mated connectors

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  Socket

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  Side view

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  Tip