This is nanovolt-stable bare copper interconnects hardware teaser. Team of metrology enthusiasts sometimes team up and organize group-buys for hard to get components and parts (due to minimum order quantities, manufacturing tooling costs, small scale manufacturing issues and bulk material logistics). This happened back in summer 2019, when we got some 5-way binding posts, metric nuts and washers and fork spade lugs. These were used for multiple years now at xDevs.com project builds and had good results, without seeling arm and leg.

Now it’s end of 2022 and for more nanovolt projects we did also limited hardware order this time too. Order requests are NOT accepted, but similar posts now getting available elsewhere on the market for those who looking for them ;-).

Copper posts?

These posts are 99.90% purity copper, without any plating. No plating allows easy mechanical cleaning by sanding/brushing surfaces. These posts allow full disassembly, no knurl locking. Some photos are shown below for reference.

This is few kilogramms of precision machined copper. Mostly just posts with insulators and #8-32 copper nuts.

One of first projects to utilize this hardware will be next line of ADR1000-based voltage references.

One of key requirements for these terminals was to allow universal use also in high resistance metrology. To enable that application the insulator on these posts is PTFE, unlike any of the traditional commercially available 5-way low thermal binding post. PTFE is excellent dielectric and have very good chemical and high temperature capabilities, so should be easy to clean with aggressive solvents for maintain surface insulation.

Upcoming active indication LED 5-way binding posts

Some of well known manufacturers started to use fancy 5-way binding posts with built-in status indication.

They look rather cool, so there was only matter of time when connector factories started exploring this in more depth.

Result of such explorations is presented below, with indication turned off:

And indication turned on, using single red LED.

Stay tuned for more information. These are actually reasonably priced, given the amount of high quality plastic parts needed to assemble such connector. I might get some in future to experiment with, so stay tuned for that.