Gold Plated Bellows Contacts

Gold Plated Bellows Contacts

Servometer® gold plated bellows contacts, are an alternative to spring loaded type test pins for the next generation of high frequency test applications. They’re manufactured from electrodeposited nickel and gold plated according to ASTM-B-488 to enhance their conductivity, and provide extremely low DC resistance with a minimum of insertion loss. They’ve been designed to provide lifetime spring & force repeatability and are rated for a maximum current of 4 amps.

Typical bellows have a low loss of only .20 dB (shorter) to .45dB (longer) at 6 GHz with a total bandwidth much higher. As you will notice from the data above, length does matter with regard to test pins, so the shorter the part the better.

Advantages of Servometer bellows over the spring loaded type test pins are their one piece construction, with no moving parts to bind or cause extra unwanted resistance or impedance issues; they can be made as small as .020 inch in diameter which becomes more critical as PCB densities increase and test pins are located closer and closer to each other and can be coated with noise reduction materials to reduce crosstalk between test pins in close proximity, with little or no loss of mechanical capabilities.
Servometer bellows can be made out of Nickel, Copper, Gold or Silver for maximum performance. Thus, the conductivity of bellows at high frequencies from the Giga-Hertz range and up is superior to similar sized spring loaded test pins.