this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
1572 points (99.2% liked)
3DPrinting
15595 readers
151 users here now
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: !functionalprint@kbin.social or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
-
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
-
Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
-
No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
-
No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
-
Do not create links to reddit
-
If you see an issue please flag it
-
No guns
-
No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is 
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
These are for niche needs. For most applications neither is necessary. If needed and space is constrained the single pin variant allows additional connectors to be packed together on a single PCB. The dual pin option doesn't, it takes up space that could be used for additional connectors.
I se no advantage at all for the dual pin design.
It looks exactly like what I imagined by screw-lock USB connector, but the single pin seems to be a really inspired design somebody had and made the entire committee angry for some reason.
The single pin only resists force. Two pins resist torques being applied to the usb connector. The single pin does resist torque but it uses the connector potentially damaging the PCB.
Short version: looks good, functions bad
But why not make a dual screw design by adding one more screw to the bottom of the current single screw one? Would be more compact and allow them to be more cross compatible.
PCB are designed with things on top of them. Typically they are mounted with the bottom of the PCB at the bottom of a case. So following normal conventions there wouldn't be a place for the bottom screw to go into something. Unless you used a bespoke case. It's much easier to have the two screw design place the screws above the PCB.
It may seem like a minor change, but it costs substantial more in design time and effort. New folded steel cases and injection moulded cases would have to be developed. Designers would use a different port, or worse deploy their own two horizontal screw design. There would then be several two screw designs (metric/imperial/very close/very far etc).
Anyone with the niche need of the two screw vertical design would likely rotate the whole connector or use a flex cable to join the connector to the main board.